


Sten and Zyrian

by xXLeondraXx



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-21 06:00:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11351331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xXLeondraXx/pseuds/xXLeondraXx
Summary: I wanted a romancable Sten in Dragon Age: Origins. Unfortunately he wasn't an option so I decided to write my own.This fic contains word for word dialog and scenarios from the game itself, sprinkled with my own original dialog and situations.This is an older work of mine from years ago, but I'm hoping it is still enjoyable to some.





	1. Chapter 1

Zyrian walked up to Sten curiously, the black-haired woman staring up at the olive-skinned giant with the white hair and short white goatee through blue eyes highlighted by red eyeshadow. She cocked her head to the side as she looked at him as curious as a child over something she had never seen before.

Sten looked down at her and furrowed his brow. “Why do you stare at me?”

“I have a question.”

“I am hardly surprised,” he replied, sounding and looking exasperated. It had been nonstop questions from her to him for the last week of travel since they had left Lothering behind, and he found it quite annoying.

“Why is it that you came to Ferelden? I’ve never seen a Qunari before you, so I assume that you don’t come here often, and thus have some reason for being here,” Zyrian replied.

“I came to answer a question.”

“What was the question?” she asked

“The Arishok asked, “What is the Blight?” and by his curiosity, I am now here,” Sten replied.

“What’s an Arishok?”

“The one that commands the antaam – the body of the Qunari,” he added before she had the chance to ask what ‘antaam’ meant.

“So he’s your king?”

“Qunari have no kings.”

“If you don’t have kings, then what do you have?”

“Little patients for endless questions,” he replied as he glared down at her, wanting nothing more than for her to take her endless stream of questions to one of the other people in the camp and leave him alone.

“Did you find the answer you were seeking to the question that you had?” Zyrian asked, abruptly changing the subject back to what they had previously been speaking of.

“A portion of it,” he replied simply.

“What was the answer?”

Sten scowled down at her. “Were you _not_ at Ostagar when the army was overwhelmed? _That_ is your answer.”

“Why would the Qunari care about the Blight?” Zyrian continued to prod, ignoring the fact that she knew the Qunari wanted her to go away. She wasn’t an idiot. She could see very clearly that he quickly was growing frustrated of her many questions, but she had never been the kind of woman to hold her tongue until _she_ felt like it. “I mean, you said they lived very far away.”

“Why do _you_?” he asked, hoping that turning her questions back on her would make her want to go away.

“I’m a Grey Warden now. It’s my job to give a damn,” she replied.

“Exactly. You don’t ask. Nor do I. The Arishok sends me, and I go.”

“Fair enough, but don’t you have to report back to him, then, now that you have gotten information on the Blight?”

“Yes.”

“So...” Zyrian looked around as if expecting to see something, then looked back at Sten. “why are you still here, as opposed to being _there_?”

“I cannot go home,” he replied, looking away from her and lowering his head as if ashamed.

Zyrian cocked her head curiously at that. “Well, you can always just stay with us,” she suggested with a kind-hearted smile.

Sten looked back at her, looking a bit confused. “Thank you,” he said after a short pause. “Can we move on?” he asked quickly, as if eager to change the subject. “We keep the darkspawn waiting.”

Zyrian smiled and clapped her hands together, something about that smile on her tattooed face making her look… sinister. “Right! Darkspawn.” She turned and walked away from Sten. “Oh how I love the feel of my blade rending flesh from bone.”

“Sometimes I wonder about her,” Alistair stated from his seated spot on a crate next to the fire. “You never quite know what’s going through that one’s head, but she fights like some kind of demon.” He took a bite of the small triangle of cheese in his hand. “You should have seen her at Ostagar. I’ve never seen someone take down an ogre as easily as she did. That thing only managed to kick her once before she killed it.”

Sten looked down at Alistair momentarily before looking back at Zyrian, who was now mock wrestling with her mabari hound, Xandir. He found her constant, relentless questioning obnoxious, to put it lightly, but he found himself admitting, only to himself, that perhaps her constant questioning was simply a yearning for her to gain knowledge that she didn’t yet know. And when he told her that he couldn’t go home, she hadn’t asked why, as he had fully expected her to do. She didn’t try to poke and prod him into telling her his reasons for saying that. She had simply stated that he could stay with the rest of them. It was a simple, yet kind, act that he didn’t expect in humans, from what he had seen of them. There were still many things that confounded him about her, though.

 

**\--- A few days later ---**

 

Zyrian looked behind her when a large shadow fell over her as she sat next to the fire, Xandir lying next to her with his head in her lap as he snored softly. Almost everyone had gone to sleep already, but she had always been a night owl and was fine with getting only five or six hours of sleep a night. She expected to see perhaps Alistair standing behind her, since he sometimes liked to stay up late with her and talk. But there stood the last person she would have thought to see standing behind her: Sten, the large Qunari soldier. She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Yes?”

“You are not quite as callow as I first thought,” Sten said slowly, as if he wasn’t used to admitting such things. “That is… unexpected.”

“Callow?” Zyrian asked confusedly. “You thought I was… callow?”

“You sound surprised. You must have heard that before.”

“I’ve been called a lot of things before. Crazy, beautiful, a total _bitch_ … but never callow. Not even once, I think.” She paused and looked off into space as she thought. “Hm… nope. Never callow.”

“You’ll get over it. Eventually.”

Zyrian put a hand on her chest and sarcastically batted her eyelashes at him. “Oh you are just _so_ kind, Sten. Really. You are. It’s a wonder that you’re a soldier and not a professional motivator that says nice things to people to make them feel better.” She cocked her head at him. “Exactly _why_ did I let you out of that itty-bitty cage, again?”

“I have wondered that, myself,” Sten replied with a scowl. “It is one of the many things I find puzzling about your behavior.”

“Well we’re in the same boat then, because there are plenty of things _I_ happen to find puzzling about big ‘ole _you_.”

Sten raised an eyebrow at that and seemed even more confused. “What is there to be puzzled by? I’m a simple creature. I like swords. I follow orders. There’s nothing to know about me.”

“Oh _you_ like swords, do you?” Zyrian asked playfully with lopsided grin. She leaned back on her arms and turned her head so she was looking at Sten upside-down, her mid-back length black hair falling back and pooling on the ground. “So do I! It’s why I use a sword _and_ a dagger, instead of going the more traditional rouge fashion of two daggers. It’s much more fun with a sword. More substance. Longer reach.”

Sten furrowed his brow at her behavior and the way she was looking at him upside down. They very first thought in his mind was that, leaning back like that, she was leaving her unguarded neck wide open for attack; a most foolish thing to do. He couldn’t keep the side of his lip twitching into the faintest of smiles, though. “I knew there had to be _some_ reason I continue to travel with you,” he found himself saying, instead of reprimanding her for leaving such a vulnerable area open to possible attack.

Zyrian gasped loudly and jumped to her feet, scrutinizing Sten closely. Xandir’s head hit the ground and he awoke with a jolt, looking here and there for danger, then looking up when he saw Sten, his small tail wagging.

“By the Maker, was that a smile I just saw?” Zyrian teased with an evil grin.

In a flash, Sten’s face went back to being stern and disapproving. “No.”

“Are you suuure?” she asked, putting her hands behind her back, leaning closer and cocking her head to the side.

“Yes,” he replied hollowly.

“Hm. Must be the play of the light then,” she said, though the grin never faded from her face. She turned away from Sten and walked toward her tent. “Come on, Xandir. Bedtime.”

The dog barked once loud and deep. He took one last look at Sten, wagged his tail at the Qunari, and bolted after Zyrian.

 

**\--- At Redcliffe a few days later ---**

 

“Well, isn’t this a delightful mess we’ve managed to stumble into?” Zyrian asked to anyone that was listening as they stood atop the hill next to the windmill and waited for these ‘creatures’ to attack the village. “First darkspawn, and now walking dead things. Marvelous.”

“It really is, isn’t it?” Alistair joked around with her as they waited. “Let’s hope the fire works against them. I’d rather not like to fight _flaming_ undead.”

“I wonder how long they’ve been dead before they were made _un_ dead,” Zyrian said with a smile. “Do you think they’ll smell like a rotting corpse, or just look like them?”

“Do you two know how to take anything seriously?” Sten growled at the two of them, his grip tightening around the hilt of his blade. “First you agree to fight a battle that is not yours to fight. Then you promise the blacksmith that you will find his daughter. We do not need to be here,” he lectured. “Our enemy is the darkspawn, not these creatures.”

“Oh? You have a problem with us fighting this? You didn’t seem to have an issue when I made the elf and that greasy bartender agree to help fight. If I remember right, you actually approved of that,” Zyrian countered.

“ _That_ is different,” Sten insisted. “This is _their_ village, and _they_ should be defending it, not us.”

“Oh hush your mouth, Sten,” Zyrian scolded as she twirled her longsword in one hand. She looked back at Sten. “We need the Tyrn’s help. If we can’t get to the castle, how are we going to get his help? Hm?” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “And do you think he’d really help us if he knew that we just left his town to rot down here?” She looked back to the path the creatures would be coming down from. “Try to look at the big picture. This is all just one little piece to the puzzle, and once the puzzle is completed, the map will show us the way to the archdemon.”

Sten furrowed his brow. “What you just said makes no sense.”

“I have to agree on this,” Leliana added. “Are we talking about a picture, a puzzle, or a map?”

“All three,” Zyrian replied with a knowing grin. “Puzzles are made of many little pieces. Each piece has a bit of something on it that looks like nothing when by itself. Put together with all the other little pieces, the puzzle makes a picture, and the picture on the puzzle, is a map. A map that points in a direction, but you don’t know the direction until all the pieces are in place, and you can see the whole picture.”

“That… is incredibly wise,” Alistair said after a short pause, looking at Zyrian with confusion and disbelief in his eyes. “Where did that come from? You usually just tell people to shut up and kill things.”

Zyrian looked over at Alistair and smiled, her piercing blue eyes shining with something the other Warden couldn’t place. “I have my moments of astute clarity. They just don’t come around often. And then they fade away and I go back to telling everyone to shut up and kill things. Of course, other times, I can’t even read my own mind. It’s weird…”

“This is still pointless,” Sten insisted, though he himself was also surprised at Zyrian’s uncharacteristic show of wisdom.

Zyrian smiled when a thought reared its head in her mind. An idea that would get Sten to stop grumbling about how pointless this all was….

“Awe,” she said, looking back at Sten. “Is the big, bad Qunari afraid of a little fight? Scared like a tiny girl at the thought of facing the undead?”

Sten glowered at her and narrowed his eyes, her words running through him like a blade and setting him instantly on the defensive. “I am _not_ afraid,” he growled. Never had anybody insulted him so brazenly.

Alistair and Leliana looked at each other and covered their mouths with their hands, trying to keep from laughing. They knew exactly what Zyrian was doing.

Zyrian shook her head, tsked and wagged a finger at him. “You aren’t convincing anyone, Sten. Well if you are _so_ terrified, then why don’t you go stand over there behind that crate where it’s nice and safe?” she mocked, pointing over at a large crate. “Go on,” she said, waving her hands at him in a shooing motion. “Go hide,” an evil glint entered her eyes, “and let the _real_ warriors take care of this,” she said, turning her back on the Qunari.

Alistair and Leliana’s eyes widened at that. They looked up at Sten, the Qunari clearly fuming at Zyrian, and doubled their efforts to not laugh, a few snorts and giggles still managing to escape from the two. “ _Right_ to the ego,” Alistair whispered to Leliana, the bard nodding, her eyes glowing with amusement.

Sten growled and drew his blade, taking a step closer to Zyrian. “I am no coward to run from a fight.”

Zyrian turned and stepped closer to Sten, standing toe-to-toe with him and grinning maliciously up at him. “Prove it,” she goaded, her eyes glinting.

The tension was thick enough between the two of them that it could be cut with a knife. Sparks seemed to flash between them as they glared at each other, neither blinking nor turning away. They dared each other with their eyes and demeanor. Zyrian dared him to prove he wasn’t afraid, and Sten dared her to keep standing in front of him. In the end, to the surprise of Alistair and Leliana, Sten broke first.

With an angry growl, Sten broke eye contact and stepped out in front of the group, sword in hand and prepared for the first attack as he kept his eyes trained on the path ahead.

Alistair and Leliana walked up to Zyrian and stood on either side of her. “You have _got_ to be some kind of crazy genius,” Alistair complimented with a grin on his face as he looked at Sten. “That was _amazing_!”

“I concur,” Leliana said in agreement, the both of them keeping their voices down so Sten wouldn’t hear them. “I don’t know _anybody_ that would stand up to a Qunari, let alone insult one and then turn their back on one. You must have some kind of death wish. He is almost two feet taller than you and at least twice your weight!”

“No such thing,” Zyrian replied smugly as she put a hand on her hip and looked at Sten. “I knew he wouldn’t do anything to me.” She looked at Leliana, then looked over at Alistair before turning her eyes back to Sten. “My friends, what you just witnessed was called reverse psychology. By insulting him and telling him that he was afraid, his natural response was to get defensive, and after that, prove to me that he wasn’t afraid. It’s like telling a child over and over to do something that they don’t want to do, then telling them that they aren’t mature enough to do it, and then the kid goes and does it. I’ve _never_ had it not work. Sten may be stoic, but he’s still a man and he still has an ego to defend. With reverse psychology and my natural charisma, I can make just about anyone do what I want them to do, without them knowing that I just made them do it.”

“Oh, you are sinister,” Alistair said. He gave Zyrian a suave grin. “I like sinister.”

“But,” Zyrian added, holding up a finger and looking over at Alistair, “you think swooping is bad, and I like to swoop.”

“Yes. Swooping _is_ bad,” Alistair agreed.

“You must teach me more of this reverse psychology,” Leliana said. “It could be useful.”

“Of course I will teach you, Leliana,” Zyrian replied, smiling at the woman. “We females are masters at it without even knowing. Once the fight is over and everything is said and done, I’ll teach you more.”

“It’s time, men!” Ser Perth yelled from behind them.

Zyrian looked back to the path to see a sinister green fog descend from the hill, rolling slowly toward them. She grabbed her dagger in her other hand and stood ready to attack. Whatever Ser Perth said after that was lost on her, as she was too focused on the coming battle.

As her eyes scanned the fog, Zyrian could make out figures moving within it. Dark shadows inside the mist. She tightened her grip on her blades, her muscles quivering in anticipation of a fight. Her heartbeat quickened and adrenaline coursed through her system. She grinned. She never felt more alive than when she was fighting. It was thrilling and dangerous. The thought that she could be stricken down at any moment by an unforeseen foe was far from terrifying. _I live for the fight,_ she thought to herself as moment before the first of the creatures emerged from the mist.

The group stood back though. Something had to be done first. A single, flaming arrow flew over their heads, lighting the oil-soaked ground aflame. The corpses ran at them with strange, twitching movements. They didn’t stop when they saw the fire. They barreled strait through it and kept coming.

Alistair’s eyes widened. “It didn’t work!”

“Yes it did,” Zyrian replied before bolting forward, her eyes trained on the corpse leading the charge. Alistair couldn’t see it, but she could tell that the fire was damaging them, slowly burning their rotting flesh and filling the air with a stench so putrid and stinging that it made her eyes water and bile rise in her throat. She held it back though, and nimbly dodged past Sten.

The Qunari lifted his blade with a loud war cry, aiming to strike down the corpse that was advancing upon them faster than the rest. He moved to swing his greatsword in a wide arch, directing the blade toward the thing’s head. To his shock, he saw something dart past him and leap at his target. Realizing it was Zyrian, he barely managed to stop the blade before it cut through her as she stabbed the thing up through the chest with her dagger, practically lifting the thing off the ground as she did so. With her sword drawn back, she yelled and brought it down, severing the head of the corpse. With it decapitated she quickly removed her dagger from its chest and leapt at her next opponent.

Momentarily stunned by her swiftness and skill, Sten almost didn’t catch the blade of a corpse off to his side. He snapped back to himself when he heard the sound of a blade whistle through the air. His warrior’s instinct taking over, he spun and grabbed the wrist of the corpse, stopping the sword before it hit him. Lifting his opponent clear off of its feet, he swung his blade at it and severed its torso from its legs, throwing the rest of its body back into to fire.

Zyrian jumped into the middle of three walking corpses. _Do it, you idiots,_ she thought to herself as all three turned toward her. She smiled when she saw them lift their blades at the same time. She ducked and rolled out between two of them as they struck, the corpses attacking each other. One had its sword arm cut off by the second, the second ended up with a blade lodged in its skull by the third, making it fall to its knees, and the third was left trying to pull the sword free of the second’s head.

 

Taking advantage of the distraction this caused, Zyrian moved behind the first corpse and kicked it in the back. It flailed as it fell into the second, both of them sprawling out on the ground. She then took her longsword and flipped it around, driving the blade through the skulls of both of them. A familiar feeling overcame her, and she spun around, using her dagger to deflect the attack of another corpse. While the corpse stood stunned by her sudden movement, she jerked her sword free and brought it across the creature’s legs, cutting them off at the thigh. It toppled to the ground and with a mighty war cry, Zyrian brought the heel of her boot down on its head.

While the others were occupied with their fights, Sten had his own. He kept away from the other soldiers, standing closer to the flaming oil than anyone else. When two corpses charged him, he swung his blade in a mighty arch and cut them in half. Another that had snuck through while he wasn’t looking ran up behind him. It wasn’t fast enough, though. Sten spun around and plunged his sword into its stomach. Turning with the creature still on his blade, he roared as he swung the blade like a bat and threw the creature on his sword into another that had just entered the fire. He watched momentarily as they both flailed pathetically before turning to face a creature at his right.

Leliana stayed back as best she could, picking off the creatures one by one with well-placed arrows to their heads. “Go for the heads!” She yelled to Alistair when she noticed that he was focusing on blows to the limbs and torso. “They go down faster!”

Alistair paused, looked back and nodded. Turning back to his fight, he blocked a mace with his shield, smashing the metal wall into the corpse. He then lifted his blade over his head and brought it down on the skull of the corpse, cutting clean through its mental helm. The corpse let out a single gurgle, then crumpled to the ground. Alistair smiled. “Hey! It works!”

When the last corpse was struck down, everybody stood and waited for more to come down the hill at them. When nothing came, some of the soldiers cautiously began to lighten up their stances.

“This isn’t right,” Zyrian whispered to herself. “That was too short.” She turned her head this way and that, scanning the landscape for signs of more. “That can’t be it. Where are the….” She paused when she saw a soldier running up the hill to her left. He was moving fast, and hurriedly. Without hesitating, she ran down the hill, passing the man as he neared the top.

The man paused momentarily to watch her go, but then turned his attention back to everyone else. “They’re attacking the village!” he cried, sounding out of breath.

“Everyone else stay here,” Alistair said. “Defend this spot.” He looked at Leliana and Sten. “We have to follow Zyrian.”

“Come on!” the man yelled before turning and running back down the hill. Alistair, Sten and Leliana close behind them. By the time they reached the village, the front of the chantry was ablaze in battle, metal clashing against metal and agonized cries echoing through the air.

“I, will, _end_ , you!” The three heard someone roar. They all turned in time to see Zyrian tear a corpse away from an archer and throw it into the fire where it screamed, writhed, and quickly died. She yelled wildly again and ran at a group of corpses, taking four of them down by herself before a single archer could train an arrow at her attackers and before a single soldier could render her air.

“Maker’s breath!” Leliana gasped as she watched Zyrian fight. “I thought she was a rouge!”

“She’s like some psychotic war goddess,” Alistair remarked with wide eyes and a slack jaw.

Sten, still sore from Zyrian’s former insults, simply grunted and ran into the fray, knocking several corpses over as he went. _Call me a coward,_ he growled to himself as he cut down one corpse. _I am no coward,_ he thought, driving his blade through two others. _Nobody calls me a coward!_

“Sten! I see you decided to pull up your big girl panties and join the fight!” Zyrian teased, going back to back with the Qunari.

“You are arrogant!” Sten yelled at her, striking a foe down that ran at them. “I almost killed you earlier when you rushed out in front of me without thinking!”

“To the contrary, my tan-skinned giant,” Zyrian laughed. She paused when a corpse charged her with its mace up. She kicked it in the chest, making it stumble back. Lunging forward as quick as a snake, she took the thing’s head off with her longsword. “I never jump into a battle without thought. I knew you would stop before you cut me down.”

“And what if I hadn’t?” Stan growled, sparing a momentary glance at her before turning back to the fight.

“Then I’d be dead, but I knew you’d see me and I knew you’d stop. You’re too observant in battle to not know it was me.” She deflected a sword with her own and drove her dagger into its head, twisting the blade quickly before removing it.

“It was still a foolhardy thing to do,” Sten replied, slightly less agitated at her after the sudden compliment. “Rushing into battle…”

“Is a great way for a rouge like me to gain the upper hand,” Zyrian interrupted. “They don’t expect it. They don’t see it coming.” She cut the arm of a corpse off. “Element of surprise, Sten. Oldest trick in the book. Besides,” she paused to deflect another blade. Twirling her own blade, she took control of her enemy’s and made the opposing sword plunge into the chest of a different corpse, “These things are slow and they twitch. They aren’t very accurate fighters.”

“I suppose I have to agree with you on that,” Sten admitted begrudgingly. These things weren’t the swiftest creatures he’d ever fought before, and they did twitch. It was like they were being manipulated. They were puppets controlled by tenuous strings, and the puppeteer didn’t know how to make their movements smooth and fluid.

“You have your way of fighting,” Zyrian said, “and I have mine. The way I fight would never work for you, just as the way you fight would never work for me.” She cut the head off the corpse and, as the head fell, she kicked it, sending it into the face of another corpse. “We use different styles, different blades. We have different training, and our skills lie in different places.”

Sten didn’t say anything as he listened to the wisdom in her words, swinging his blade in an arch and taking down three corpses.

“You simply cannot expect a small human female to fight the same as a large Qunari male,” Zyrian continued as she fought. “Not everybody can fight the same, and you can’t expect it to be any other way.”

The two exchanged no more words past that. It didn’t take long before the last of the creatures had been brought down. Zyrian looked up. The sky was starting to go from black to blue as the sun rose in the distance, lighting up the horizon. “What better way to start the morning that covered in corpse fluids?” she grumbled to herself as she saw the putrid black liquid that covered her armor and skin. She moved away from Sten when she was sure the threat was over, sheathing her weapons. “Personally I like a piece of toast, but I suppose this is just as good.”

“We’ve done it!”

Zyrian looked over when she heard Murdock. The man lifted his bow into the air.

“We won!”

The soldiers broke out into cheers as the sun rose higher.

_Yes, yes, we won,_ Zyrian thought to herself. _And I need a bath._


	2. Chapter 2

“Blood mages, walking corpses, psychotic Orlesian women, a demon-possessed child… can’t I _ever_ have just _one_ normal day?” Zyrian sighed as the group walked back to camp. “Oh and Morrigan is going to be tickled pink by _this_ ,” she growled. “‘Morrigan, sweetie, we need your help un-possessing the Bann’s son, so we need you to go through the Fade in a blood magic ritual and kill the demon that possesses him’.” She threw her hands up in frustration. “Why can’t anyone solve their own problems?! I swear I might as well be beating my head against a wall!”

Sten, Leliana and Alistair remained silent as Zyrian ranted. They knew her enough to know that if they said anything, she was liable to turn and punch the person in the face that had spoken.

Then again, Alistair was never one to hold his tongue when he should.

“Maybe for once she’ll find it in that cold husk she calls a heart to not mind helping?” Alistair suggested.

Zyrian stopped. “Oh I’m _sure,_ that’s what’s going to happen, Alistair.” She turned on her heel and glared at Alistair, a menacing grin on her face. “And _maybe_ , just maybe, while we are headed back to the castle to do this, Leliana with spontaneously turn into an Old God worshiping _man_ and Sten will start skipping and throwing flower petals on the ground in our wake to make everything look prettier!” she retorted, her voice growing louder and angrier as she spoke until she was practically yelling at Alistair.

Alistair took as step back with wide eyes, discretely moving his shield between himself and the raging woman in front of her. _She is utterly terrifying,_ he thought to himself as he looked at her. “Your… your eye is twitching, Zyrian.”

To everyone’s collective shock, Zyrian literally hissed at Alistair before turning back around and continuing toward the camp.

“That,” Alistair said, “is the single most terrifying woman I have ever met in my entire life.”

Leliana nodded. “I agree. She can be as gentle as a lamb sometimes, and scarier than even the darkspawn at other times.”

 

Jowan looked at Zyrian and company when they finally returned to the throne room. “So what will it be then?”

“We let you do this ritual,” Zyrian replied, though the words left a bitter taste in her mouth as she said them. _It’s this or kill the kid,_ she tried to tell herself. _The Circle is too far away to risk the trip to go ask for help. We_ have _to do this. It’s the only real option._

“Who will go into the Fade, then?” Jowan asked.

“Morrigan will,” Zyrian said.

Morrigan looked over and scowled at Zyrian, finally understanding why she had said she needed her help with something at the castle. “I notice you do not ask me, first,” she said, clearly offended. “No matter. I will go, as I am your willing slave.”

“I’ll make it up to you, Morrigan,” Zyrian said. “I promise.”

“You have my eternal gratitude. May the Maker go with you, madam,” Isolde said to Morrigan, her eyes downcast and her demeanor that of a broken woman.

“I certainly hope not,” Morrigan scoffed. “That would be rather distracting.”

“Then let’s…” Jowan paused and took a deep breath, “let’s get this started.”

 

**\--- Later ---**

 

Alistair walked up to Zyrian as the woman pet her mabari. “Now that we’re back at the camp,” he started, “I want to talk about what happened. At Redcliffe.”

Zyrian patted Xandir on the head then looked over at Alistair, giving him her full attention. “What’s on your mind, Alistair? Even though, you know, you were there and saw the whole thing yourself.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve had some time to think about it now.” Alistair took a deep breath. “You let Lady Isolde sacrifice herself? With blood magic? How could you do that?” he literally yelled at her.

Zyrian’s eyes widened in shock. Alistair had never raised his voice before, especially not to her. Shock, though, quickly gave way to anger, and she shot to her feet and poked Alistair in the chest. “What would you rather of had me do?” she yelled right back. “Kill Connor? A little boy who’s only crime was having a psychotic mother that refused to send him where he could get the training he needed to avoid this whole blasted thing! And _why_ did she not send him to the Circle? Hm? Because she was a selfish bitch that worried more about her reputation than her own child!”

“We _could_ have gone to the Circle of Magi! W-we could have tried harder! We _should_ have tried something that didn’t involve blood magic, that’s for sure! This is the arl’s son and wife we’re talking about here! What do you think he’ll say when we revive him?”

“Oh you mean other than being pissed at his dead wife for keeping such a _huge_ secret from him?” Zyrian snapped, putting both hands on her hips. “I don’t know this man! I don’t know, nor do I really give a shit, what he’s going to say when he wakes up! I only went to Redcliffe looking for troops to help us fight the darkspawn, or have you forgotten about them already?”

“I just don’t know how you could do it, how you could make that decision.” Alistair growled, lowering his voice but keeping the scowl in place. “I owe the arl more than this.”

“If you are _so_ torn up over this whole fucking matter, why didn’t you say anything in the castle? Huh?” Zyrian continued to yell. At this point, everyone in the camp was staring at them. Even Morrigan had come down from her spot away from everyone else to listen and watch the scene unfolding before them. “Do _you_ think you could have done better? Huh? Then why didn’t you? Why didn’t you jump in and say ‘No! We aren’t doing this!’? You didn’t! You just stood there and didn’t say a thing! You had more than a dozen opportunities to help me decide what to do, but you didn’t. Her death is on your hands as much as it is on mine, Alistair! You could _not_ have done any better!”

Alistair stared coldly at her. “Maybe not.” He took a step back. “You’re probably right. I just would have screwed it up like I do everything else. But at least I would have cared.”

“Do _not_ try to guilt trip me with the death of a woman I didn’t know nor like by telling me I didn’t care, Alistair!” Zyrian snapped, her eyes raging. At her side, Xandir bristled and growled at Alistair, knowing that it was that man that had caused his master so much distress.

“Enough!” Alistair growled, waving his hands in front of him to signal the end of the conversation. “I don’t want to say any more. I’ve said too much as it was. We’ve still got plenty to do and we should do it.”

“Oh, and before we end this conversation, let me give you a little something,” Zyrian snarled as she reached into her pocket.

Almost everyone in camp surged toward the two of them. They didn’t know what Zyrian was going to take out of her pocket, but they knew how impulsive she could be sometimes and didn’t want her to do something stupid.

Zyrian pulled an amulet out of her pocket and threw it as hard as she could at Alistair. The amulet hit him in the face, smashing into his nose and making the man see white as he toppled over and landed heavily on the ground.

“I found your mother’s precious amulet on the Arl’s desk while you weren’t paying attention!” she snarled. Everyone in the camp stopped and looked at Alistair. “I was going to give it to you as a friend that found something meaningful to another friend,” she continued, watching Alistair pick himself up off the ground with the amulet in one hand and his bleeding nose in his other hand.

Alistair groaned as he held his nose. “I think you broke my nose!”

“You deserve no better than to have it thrown into your face and break your nose, you ungrateful, metaphorical bastard!” Zyrian screamed before turning on her heel and stalking off to her tent. She walked inside, closing the flap angrily and tying it shut. Outside the tent, Xandir lay down, his fur still bristled and his eyes pinned on Alistair.

Alistair watched Zyrian leave, then looked down at the amulet. It had a bit of blood on it, but she was right. It _was_ his mother’s amulet. The one he had smashed against a wall in a fit of rage as a child. _The arl must have picked up all the pieces and fixed it_ , he thought. Despite the anger he had just felt, it was quickly washed away with a massive wave of regret and guilt. _Everything I just said to her,_ he thought to himself. “What have I done?” he asked himself as he looked down at the amulet.

“I would say that you very well might have lost the only _real_ friend you had in this entire camp,” Morrigan replied with a smug grin.

“Thank you, Morrigan. You make me feel so much better,” he growled.

“How could you say all those things to Zyrian?” Leliana asked, almost sounding betrayed herself. “She was your best friend. She did what she could, Alistair. I don’t approve of what she did, either, but I’m not going to yell at her and tell her she is a bad person for doing what she did.” The bard looked back at Zyrian’s tent, her expression very sad. “She was under so much presser to make the right decision.”

“Could any of her options have been “right”?” Morrigan asked. “Kill the boy, kill the mother to save the boy, or leave the castle to go to the mages, leaving the demon-possessed boy to do whatever he wanted. That demon was not stupid, and would have known that she would have left to go get help, and it likely would have killed all three of them in her absence.”

“I… I didn’t think of that,” Alistair admitted, hanging his head and looking down at the amulet.

“Well that is because you rarely _think_ before you say anything,” Morrigan said bluntly as she crossed her arms. “Zyrian was correct. You _couldn’t_ have done any better, and you were right when you said that you only screw everything up.”

“Really. Thank you all. I feel _so_ much better now,” Alistair grumbled.

Sten said nothing as he listed to the two women berate Alistair. They had the right to, as he saw it. What Alistair had said was uncalled for, and an inappropriate outburst from a subordinate to his superior. He already held enough distain for the man, but now Alistair had simply given him another reason to glare whenever the Warden tried to talk to him, as far as he was concerned. Had a Qunari made such an outburst to the Arishok, the Arishok would have had him executed immediately.

“Will you all just get off my back and… let me go tend to my nose in peace?” Alistair huffed, still holding his bleeding nose. “I’m pretty sure she broke it.” He moved his hand away and looked down his nose, cringing when he saw how crooked it was, not to mention the fact that he couldn’t breathe out of it.

“I’m sure Sten can fix that,” Morrigan said with an evil grin. She turned to Sten. “Oh, Sten? Would you fix Alistair’s nose?”

“Gladly,” Sten replied as he uncrossed his arms and walked toward Alistair.

“Uh, no. That’s not necessary,” Alistair said, his eyes wide as he started to back away from Sten.

“Oh don’t worry, Alistair,” Leliana said as she stepped behind him so he couldn’t retreat.

Sten put one massive had on Alistair’s shoulder, squeezing tighter than he needed to.

“It will only take a moment,” Leliana continued as she crossed her arms and looked over at Morrigan, the two women smiling.

Zyrian stopped screaming into her pillow and looked behind her when she heard Alistair cry out in what sounded nothing short of agony. She moved toward the flap of her tent and peeked through a crack in the fabric in time to see Sten remove his hand from Alistair’s nose, Morrigan and Leliana standing behind and beside Alistair. She smiled to herself when Sten took his hand off of Alistair’s shoulder, the man instantly toppling to the ground. _Well,_ she thought to herself, _that makes me feel a little bit better._

Even so, she couldn’t get everything Alistair had said out of her mind. It made her want to stalk out there, punch him in the nose to mess it up again, and tell none of them to fix it for him. _How dare he!_ Picking up the pillow, she pressed it against her face and screamed into it again. It was something her mother had taught her to do when she was younger. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working. She didn’t want to scream at the pillow. She wanted to hit things. Things that looked like Alistair. _He had_ no _right,_ she growled to herself. Putting the pillow on the ground, she drove her fists into it again and again, growling under her breath.

“Zyrian, are you alright?” she heard from just outside the flap to her tent.

“No, Leliana” Zyrian growled, her eye twitching.

“Are you beating up a pillow?” Leliana asked. “Sometimes that helps.”

“Well it’s not,” Zyrian replied angrily.

“A pillow?” she heard Morrigan say. “She doesn’t need to hit a pillow. She needs to go hit other things. Things that are alive, and that maybe look like that buffoon Alistair.”

“I like the way you think, Morrigan,” Zyrian called back with a grin.

“Oh leave the man to stew in his regret for what he said. He went to his tent if you want to come out and sit by the fire with Morrigan and I, Zyrian.”

“Yes, and perhaps we can talk about ways to beat the stupid man to a pulp,” Morrigan added. “Perhaps Sten would help. He was certainly willing to help ‘fix’ Alistair’s nose.”

Zyrian smiled to herself, some of her rage bubbling down. “Alright,” she said as she grabbed something out of the corner and untied the flaps to her tent. “But,” she said as she emerged and stood up, holding the container up for the other two to see with a sly smile on her face, “I’m not coming out without my wine.”

“A good idea,” Leliana agreed. “I didn’t know Fereldens liked wine much. Just like you don’t much like horses,” she said as the three of them walked toward the fire and sat down.

“True enough that most Ferledens like our ale and our dogs,” Zyrian replied as she took the cork out of the mouth of the wineskin, “I happen to like both wine _and_ horses. What about you, Morrigan?” Zyrian asked as she looked over at the witch. “Do _you_ like wine?”

“I have tried it from time to time, and it is good enough, but I never had much of it at any one time,” Morrigan admitted. “A glass full at most, perhaps.”

“You should try getting drunk on wine, Morrigan,” Zyrian said before tipping the wineskin up to her mouth and taking a swig. “It’s super fun. You want some, Leliana?” she asked, handing her the wineskin.

“Yes, please,” Leliana replied. She took the wineskin and too an experimental sip. “Oh my, this is very smooth,” she said. “It must be very old.”

“It’s older than me,” Zyrian replied as Leliana took a slightly longer drink. “I’m not sure how old, exactly, but all I care is that it’s good.”

“Is that a good thing?” Morrigan asked from her seat next to the fire. “That the wine is old?”

“Oh very good,” Leliana replied, handing the wineskin back to Zyrian. “The older the wine gets, the smoother it is and the better it tastes.”

“And the longer it ferments and the faster it gets you drunk,” Zyrian added, she and Leliana laughing. “Here,” she said, holding the wineskin to Morrigan. “Live a little. I promise that enough of this will get even you to prattle on like a girl.”

Morrigan furrowed her brow. “And what makes you think that I would _want_ to prattle on like a girl?” she asked skeptically.

“Oh, come on, Morrigan. Deep inside every woman is the want to gossip and look pretty and have her hair done,” Zyrian replied. “I’ll bet that you are no exception.”

“Oh! Speaking of hair, may I brush yours, Zyrian?” Leliana asked, her eyes sparkling. “You have such pretty hair, but I think I could make it look better.”

“Why do you want to brush her hair?” Morrigan asked as she hesitantly took the wineskin, looking at it like some kind of foreign insect.

“Because it’s pretty,” Leliana replied simply, as if that was all the elaboration that was needed.

“Well, yes, I admit that she does have pretty hair,” Morrigan replied, “but that does not make me want to brush it.”

“Well then you do not appreciate pretty hair like I do,” Leliana replied. She took a small comb from her belt and looked at Zyrian. “May I?”

Zyrian smiled and turned her back to Leliana. “Sure. Have at it. I’ve been thinking of trying to find a new way to wear it, but I’m no good with hair, so I usually just brush it out and call it good.”

“Oh but that doesn’t do you or your hair any justice,” Leliana remarked as she started to comb through a section of Zyrian’s hair. “Hair like yours needs to be worn up. Or perhaps in braids. I am not sure. I will figure something out, though, and it will look amazing.”

“I still don’t see the point of all this girl talk,” Morrigan said.

Zyrian shrugged. “There isn’t really a point, aside to get away from those knuckle-draggers we call men.”

Leliana let out a little laugh at that.

“Come on, Morrigan,” Zyrian prodded. “You can’t tell me that you’ve never once wished to wear pretty shoes or go dancing or just once walk through a crowd and have men be in awe of your beauty. Quite frankly, I personally use it to my advantage all the time,” she said with a laugh. “Men get stupid around a beautiful woman, and they’ll do just about anything you ask them to do.”

“Perhaps, but a show of strength and skill will do the same thing,” Morrigan retorted.

“While that may be true, I’m sure that in your entire life, you’ve wished at least one time to get out of the wilds and wear a beautiful flowing gown, and the finest jewelry laced with glimmering gemstones,” Leliana said. “To have pearls in your hair and steal the breath away from every man that sees you. Even the married ones.”

Zyrian and Leliana both laughed at that. “It can be fun to have everyone think you’re beautiful, Morrigan,” she added. “Just… not all the time. If you hear it all the time, then it gets really annoying, at least to me. Are you going to drink any of that?” she asked when she realized that Morrigan hadn’t yet taken a sip.

“I don’t know…”

“Oh don’t be scared that the wine will let out a little of your inner girl, Morrigan,” Leliana said. “Sten wouldn’t care and I’m sure Alistair has decided to stay in his tent for the rest of the night.”

“Yeah, and if he does come out, I’ll just have Xandir chase him back in.” She looked over at her hound. “He’s just as angry at Alistair as I am. I’m surprised he didn’t latch onto the man’s leg by his teeth while he was yelling at me.”

“So am I,” Leliana replied. “We all saw what happened. When I saw Xandir, snarling like he did, I thought we were going to have to have Morrigan heal one of his body parts back onto his body.”

“Ha! As if I would have done it,” Morrigan scoffed, finally taking a sip of the wine. “As it is, I won’t be helping him with that broken nose of his. He deserved it after what he said. That fool has no right to criticize you, Zyrian, for he did nothing to stop you. As you said, the blame lies with him as well.”

“I can’t wait until tomorrow,” Zyrian said as Leliana continued to brush her hair. “Alistair’s face is going to look awful.”

“You don’t regret breaking his nose, even a little?” Leliana asked. “I know he deserved it, but still.”

“No. I really don’t regret it,” Zyrian replied. She took the wineskin when Morrigan offered it and took a swig. “After what he said to me, I have no reason to feel even a little remorse. So I don’t. Call me heartless, but he deserves that swollen face and inability to breathe through his nose that he’s going to have tomorrow.”

The three of them dropped the topic of Alistair soon after, speaking instead of battles and of stories they had. Morrigan told them what it was like to live in the Wilds. Leliana wove them tales of Orlais. Zyrian told them about what it was like to grow up a tyrn’s daughter.

“It must have been nice to grow up as nobility,” Leliana said as she pulled a small section of Zyrian’s hair back from her face and began to braid it.

“You’d think, but you’d be wrong,” Zyrian replied. “Sure, sure, it was nice and I don’t have a massive list of complaints, but people dote on you all the time,” she said in exasperation. “Do you need this, my lady? Do you need help with that, my lady? My lady this, my lady that… ugh! At times it was so infuriating. They treated me like I had two broken legs and arms and couldn’t move or do anything for myself. Not to mention the way some of the people treated the elves that worked in the castle was just horrendous. I don’t understand why people have to beat them up and call them names all the time. They’re very nice people.”

“That they are,” Leliana agreed. “I think it is a crime that they are forced to live as second class citizens as they do.”

“Well tis’ their own fault,” Morrigan retorted. “They could have all decided to stay Dalish, as the ones in the forest are, but they chose to be weak and bow to the whims of the humans. I can feel no pity for a people that have only themselves to blame for the way they have to live.”

“I almost hate to say it, but I agree with you, Morrigan,” Zyrian replied, taking a drink of wine. Morrigan had had the least out of the three of them, and Zyrian by far had had the most, and showed no signs of putting down the wineskin. It made her feel better, though. The heady tingle and the warmth that spread thorough her entire body made her forget about everything that had happened earlier. The battle. The castle. Alistair yelling at her. In the back of her mind was a tiny voice that told her in the morning she would remember everything, along with having a throbbing headache if she didn’t stop drinking, but she really didn’t care right now.

“Oh, and another thing I hated were the constant compliments,” Zyrian added after taking another drink of wine. “It’s nice to hear that you’re beautiful every now and again, but it loses its charm if you hear it roughly one hundred times a day from _everybody_. It’s like they were terrified that I would smite them down if they didn’t bend down and kiss my feet every time they had the chance!” she exclaimed. She threw her arms in the air as she said so, but the sudden action made her lose her balance and fall back onto Leliana. The two women started to laugh uncontrollably. Even Morrigan began to chuckle a little.

“I think you’ve had too much wine, my dear,” Leliana said as she pushed Zyrian back up into a sitting position.

“I know I’ve had too much when the wine is gone, my good friend,” Zyrian replied. She lifted up the wineskin. “Until then, bottoms up.” That said she brought the wineskin back to her lips and took a few large gulps.

“Head forward, Zyrian,” Leliana chuckled. “I’m almost done with your hair.”

Zyrian looked forward as Leliana continued to work on her hair. “What are you doing, exactly?” she asked.

“Well,” Leliana replied, “at first I thought I would put your hair up in a bun, but then I realized that it looks good down, and the way that your hair frames your face makes your eyes look even more stunning,” the bard explained as she tied off the end of the braid and started to do the same with a section of hair away from the opposite side of her face. “So I couldn’t pull it all up. And then it hit me! Braids! Your hair would look lovely braided, just not all of it. And large braids wouldn’t look good either. I can tell. So…” she tied off the braid she had just been working on, then took a small hand mirror out of the sash tied around her waist, holding the mirror in front of Zyrian.

Zyrian cocked her head as she looked in the mirror. Leliana had braided several small braids through her hair. At the front, framing her face, were two slightly thicker braids.

“It’s a small change,” Leliana admitted.

“I love it,” Zyrian replied with a smile. “It _is_ simple, but it looks much better.” She looked over at Morrigan. “What do you think?”

“Well, it _does_ look nice,” the witch admitted.

“Perhaps I could do yours next,” Leliana suggested.

“Not going to happen,” Morrigan replied as she crossed her arms. The three remained silent for a few seconds before they started to laugh.

Leliana stood up. “I’m glad you like it.”

“Where you going?” Zyrian asked, turning half around and looking up at the bard.

“I’m going to bed,” Leliana said. “I am very tired. I’m surprised that you are still up! We haven’t slept in over a day.”

“Party-pooper,” Zyrian replied, fake pouting up at Leliana.

“I’m going to bed as well,” Morrigan said, also standing up. She brushed some dirt off of her lap. “You should consider doing the same, unless you plan to sleep through the day tomorrow.”

Zyrian shrugged and looked at the fire. “Why not? I didn’t plan on packing up camp for at least another day or so anyways. Check it out.” She set the wineskin off to the side and stretched out her right leg. Grabbing the edge of her shin-length soft buckskin nightgown and pulled it up past her thigh, looking at her leg as she did so.

Morrigan and Leliana gasped and recoiled at the sight of the massive black and purple bruise that covered the entire outside of Zyrian’s thigh. At the center of the bruise was a much lighter spot that was almost the color of her normal skin, but not quite. “By the Maker, what happened?” Leliana asked, her eyes wide.

“I took a mace to the leg while we were fighting in Redcliffe,” Zyrian replied as she lightly prodded at the bruise. “This here,” she pointed at the spot in the center, “Is the knot where the mace hit. It hurts the worse.”

“I am surprised it did not break your leg,” Morrigan said, slightly less shocked than Leliana was.

“Actually, so am I,” Zyrian replied. “It happened just before you and Sten managed to get to the Chantry.”

“And yet I don’t think I ever once saw you limp while we were fighting or while we were in the castle,” Leliana said, amazed.

“Nor have I,” Morrigan said.

“I’m _really_ good at dealing with pain,” Zyrian replied casually.

“I could heal that for you,” Morrigan offered.

“Thank you for the offer, Morrigan, but no thank you.”

Morrigan furrowed her brow. “Why not? What is the point of keeping this injury when I could erase it in mere seconds?”

“Between all the poultices and magical healing,” Zyrian looked up at Morrigan and smiled, “I don’t want my body to forget how to fix itself. Besides,” she looked back to the massive bruise, “it’s not the worse I’ve ever had. It’s not life threatening. Just a bruise and some muscle trauma. It’ll heal.”

“Well I may think it’s a foolish thing to do, but as you wish,” Morrigan said before turning and heading off to her part of the camp.

“You really should take it easy on the wine, Zyrian,” Leliana suggested as she looked down at the black-haired woman.

Zyrian stuck her tongue out at Leliana. “I never get to have any fun anymore.” She held up the wineskin and flipped her head so some stray hair would move from in front of her shoulder to behind it. “What’s life without a little fun?”

Seeing that Leliana wouldn’t be able to convince Zyrian otherwise, she sighed and shook her head, though there was a small smile on her face. “Well at least try to get back to your tent before you pass out, yes?”

“Will do,” Zyrian replied, turning her eyes back to the fire.

Leliana shook her head a little before turning and walking off toward her tent.

Xandir raised his head when he saw Morrigan and Leliana leave. Seeing room for himself, he stood and trotted over to his master. He stood behind her and licked her face, his tail wagging.

“Hey, big puppy,” she cooed, wrapping one of her arms around the mabari’s thick neck and hugging the dog. She smiled and held the wineskin up to him. “Want some?”

Xandir leaned forward a bit and sniffed the opening in the skin. He jerked his head back at the smell, turning his head to the side and making a gagging noise.

“Oh yeah? Well your farts smell, so there,” she said to the dog before taking another drink. She lowered her arm from the dog’s neck and patted the ground. “Lay down, Xandir.”

Ever obedient, Xandir laid down behind Zyrian, the woman leaning back against him as she often did when she was next to the fire.

Zyrian looked down at the wineskin and shrugged. “To me, I suppose.”


	3. Chapter 3

Sten, after some time, stood up. He’d been sitting apart from the camp for a few hours, meditating by cleaning and sharpening his greatsword. He’d been contemplating on the battle at Redcliffe as he did so. There was something on his mind that confounded him to no end. Sheathing the blade, he turned his gaze on the campfire to see Zyrian sitting against her mabari. Nobody else was out. Needing to try and clarify the question in his mind, he walked toward her

“What now, Sten? Come to berate me more on how I fight?” she asked a bit hollowly when she saw a shadow fall over her that could only be Sten.

“I do not understand,” Sten said. “You look like a woman.”

“If you’re flirting with me, you’re going about it all wrong,” she said, keeping her half-lidded eyes on the fire.

“ ‘Flirting’?” Sten questioned, saying the word slowly. “I don’t know this word. Speak the common tongue.”

Zyrian sighed. “Never mind. And I would _hope_ that I look like a woman, because I _am_ a woman. I sure as hell don’t want to look like a man. _That_ would be ego-crushing.”

“You are a Grey Warden, so it follows that you can’t be a woman.”

“And why, pre tell, can I _not_ be a woman _and_ a Grey Warden?” she asked, still refusing to look at him.

“Women are priests, artisans, shopkeepers, or farmers. They don’t fight,” Sten said sternly.

Zyrian snorted. “Maybe women don’t fight where _you_ come from, but this is Ferelden, and women _do_ fight here, whether you like it or not.”

“Why would women wish to be men?” he asked slowly, as if trying to work this out in his mind at the same time. “That makes no sense.”

“Women who fight don’t wish to be men, Sten. Well, at least not most of them. No. Women that fight simply want to be women who fight. We’ve always been seen as the inferior gender and we have to work twice as hard to be equal to men. Some women, like _your_ women, are content to stay at home baking bread and popping out babies. But other women, like me, say the hell with the domestic life and plunge right into the blood and gore of battle. We just want to fight.”

“Do they also wish to live on the moon? That’s as attainable.”

“I’m a woman, Sten, and I fight. You _saw_ me fight in Redcliffe.”

Sten narrowed his eyes at her. “One of those things can’t be true.”

Zyrian rolled her eyes and took a swig from her wineskin. _Thickheaded Qunari._

“A person is born: Qunari, or human, or elven, or dwarf. He doesn’t choose that,” Sten started.

“And he’s off, ladies and gentlemen,” Zyrian whispered to herself.

“The size of his hands, whether he is clever or foolish, the land he comes from, the color of his hair…. These are beyond his control. We do not choose. We simply are.”

“Maybe where _you’re_ from everyone simply _is_ ,” she replied, making air quotes with her fingers when she said ‘is’. “But where _I’m_ from, which is soil you happen to stand on right now, if a person is determined enough, they can do anything.”

“Can they?”

“With sufficient determination and intelligence, yes. If a beggar is smart enough, he can take fifty silver and turn it into one hundred sovereigns. All it takes is smarts and determination.” She took another swig. “And, you know, the fifty silver to start out with.”

Sten snorted. “We’ll see.”

“You know, Sten, you don’t have to stand here harassing me and calling me a man,” Zyrian finally snapped. Sten was ruining her buzz. She threw her arms open wide. “There’s a _whole_ campsite for you to wander around in. Go… I dunno… play with that rock over there. That rock looks fun,” she growled, pointing at a large, moss-covered rock sticking out of the ground. “Go dig it up and bury it somewhere else. I’m sure that’ll keep you occupied for a while.”

Sten furrowed his brow at that. “I am not a dog.”

“No. You’re right. You aren’t a dog. You must be a woman. I mean, you can’t _possibly_ be a man,” she said with a growl.

Sten crossed his arms and glared down at her. “And why do you say that?”

Zyrian tipped her head back and looked at Sten with a grin. “Because only women braid their hair, honey,” she replied, twirling one of the braids Leliana had put in her hair around her index finger.

Sten’s scowl became even more impressive, taking instant offence to what had just been said. “These are a symbol of the warrior,” he growled back.

“Oh, but you _can’t_ be a warrior,” Zyrian replied. She turned around and looked up at Sten, though she didn’t stand. “Because you’re clearly a woman, and you’re clearly a woman because you braid your pretty white hair.”

Sten growled down at her. “These….”

“And do you do it yourself?” she interrupted, leaning forward over her mabari and cocking her head to the side. “Because it’s _very_ well done. Did your mommy teach you how to do it when you were a little girl?”

Sten narrowed his eyes at her and clenched his fits.

“I know _my_ mommy taught me how to braid my hair when I was a little girl. She also used to dress me in cute little fluffy pink dresses. Did your mommy do the same for you? Oh I bet you were absolutely adorable!” Zyrian teased, clasping her hands next to her cheek and batting her long, black eyelashes at him. She grinned when she saw the way Sten fumed, clearly attempting to keep his anger in check, though the rage flickered behind his purple eyes. “And did you ever put flowers in your pretty braided hair? Oh, I bet you looked just like a princess!”

“Parshaara!” Sten snapped. “You will say no more!”

“Oh, did I hurt your wittle feelers?” Zyrian asked, making her eyes big and fake pouting at Sten.

Sten merely growled down at her.

All humor suddenly fell from Zyrian’s face, and she looked coldly and seriously up at Sten. “Hurts, doesn’t it? Having your gender called into questions simply because of something you do?” With a grunt, she pushed herself up onto her feet, swaying a bit from side to side. “I don’t know much of this ‘Qun’ of yours,” she said, pointing at Sten. It took her a moment to realize that she wasn’t actually pointing at him, or looking at him, for that matter. She shook her head and blinked rapidly to clear her vision, turning her eyes and finger at Sten once she could see a bit more clearly, “but,” she continued, “it must not teach you humility, manners, or how to not be a hypocrite. My mama always told me ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all’. If you’re not going to follow that little bit of advice, then I’m not.” She held her arms to the sides. “I’m queen bitch, baby, and any insult you can throw at me I can throw back harder, and I make it sting.”

Sten looked curiously at her, some of his rage seeping away. She was acting very strange, and she didn’t seem to be able to stand strait. “Why do you sway?” he asked, the expression on his face disapproving.

“Because I am _super_ drunk right now,” Zyrian replied, bursting into unexplained laughter a moment later. “Oh, wait, wait!” she said when she saw Sten open his mouth. “Lemme guess.” She cleared her throat, deepening her voice to mock Sten’s. “That is irresponsible. _You_ are a Grey Warden, even though you claim you’re a woman and I’m pretty sure you’re a man. _You_ have a duty to stop the darkspawn. You cannot just drink whenever you want and the thing with the this and the….” Zyrian paused. “What was I just talking about?” She looked up at Sten. Her eyes sparked when she remembered and she smiled. “Oh, right. You, my good man, or woman, as it were,” she said as she patted his chest and looked up at him, “are an asshole. Come on, Xandir!” she called to her mabari as she stumbled toward her tent. “Mama’s gotta sleep herself into a hangover.”

Sten watched, almost disgusted, as Zyrian tottered and stumbled in a woozy weave toward her tent. Several times she almost tripped and fell over her own feet. He crossed his arms over his chest as he watched her. _Disgraceful,_ he thought to himself. It seemed to him that she would actually make it to the tent, though, as she grabbed the flap to the tent with one hand and moved it out of the way. However, she began to sway dangerously as she did so, falling onto her face a second later, half in and half out of her tent.

Sten furrowed his brow even more at that. “Basra vashedan,” Sten muttered under his breath. _Between her and that other coward of a Warden, the Blight will swallow up this land long before it is defeated._ Turning his back with one last disdainful glare at Zyrian’s unconscious self, his purple eyes scanned the burning embers of the fire.

Xandir whimpered when Zyrian fell and didn’t move. He nudged her shoulder with his nose and sniffed her face. Content that she was still alive, just unconscious, he moved around to her head and gently grabbed the shoulder of her nightgown between his teeth. He pulled on the fabric, hoping to drag Zyrian into the tent. The fabric was loose, though, and he soon realized that this wouldn’t work. He let go of her nightgown and tried to push her farther into the tent by pushing on one of her arms. That, though, only succeeded in moving one of her arms. He lowered his ears and whimpered. Crawling into the tent, he grabbed the elk pelt she used as a blanket and drug it out over Zyrian, covering her up with it before lying down next to her legs.

Sten continued to stare into the fire, his purple eyes searching. What he was searching for, he didn’t know. He just stared unblinking at the warm, orange flames. The blackened, cracked wood. The cherry red embers that smoldered within the heart of the fire.

 

“ _Why do you stare at the fire?” Sten asked Zyrian. “What is so fascinating about it?”_

“ _Well, just stare at it,” Zyrian replied, her chin on her knee as she stared into the depths of the campfire. “A fire seems such a simple thing. You light the wood on fire and it burns. But it’s more than that. It’s alive. It needs something to sustain it, and it needs air to stay alive and strong.” She turned her head a bit to the side to look at the fire at a slightly different angle. “There are so many things to see in a simple fire. The way the flames dance through the cracks in the wood. The embers flickering deep within. Staring at the fire is my form of meditation. It helps me collect my thoughts and reflect on the day. The soft warmth and warm colors of this campfire is the most calming thing I have in a life of war and violence. If you stare long enough, you can almost see things. Things from your past. But you have to look very long and hard. I don’t expect you to understand, Sten. Just leave me to stare at the fire.”_

 

Sten reflected on those words as he himself stared at the fire. There had been one of her rare moments of wisdom in those words. He had never thought fire to be such an amazing thing, but he admitted to himself that he had never just stood around and stared at a fire while he let his mind wander. He didn’t stare for much longer, though. He found himself turning his head and looking at where Zyrian had fallen unconscious. He saw Xandir lying next to his master, and assumed that the dog was the one that had put the pelt over her legs to keep her warm. He could feel the chill in the air growing thicker. Letting out a defeated sigh, he turned and walked toward Zyrian’s unconscious form.

Xandir’s ears perked up when he heard the familiar sound of the large Qunari moving closer. He lifted his head and looked at Sten, cocking his head to the side. When the Qunari knelt down next to Zyrian, Xandir stood and moved off to the side.

Gently flipping Zyrian onto her back, Sten put and arm under her shoulders and an arm under her legs and picked her up pelt and all. He used his shoulder to open the flap to her tent and stepped inside with her. He had to crouch and hunch to fit somewhat comfortably in the tent, since it was only half the size of his own. He paid that fact little mind, though, as he carefully set her down on her bedroll. He pulled his arms out from under her, but paused as he moved back, looking carefully at her as he knelt on one knee at her side.

_Women don’t fight,_ he thought as he looked at her. He could not deny the fact that she was in fact a warrior of skill, as opposed to Alistair, but he still couldn’t wrap his mind around the thought of a woman fighting. It went against everything he was taught and everything he had seen growing up. _Women are priests, artisans, shopkeepers, and farmers, but she looks like a woman,_ he thought. He narrowed his eyes a bit as he looked at her. Her features were soft and smooth like a woman. Her skin glowed like a woman’s skin. Her legs were long and slender like a woman’s, her hands small compared to a man’s. His mind argued with what his eyes saw. _Women, don’t, fight,_ his mind told him. _No man looks like this,_ his eyes told him.

At no command of his mind that he could remember, Sten reached forward and brushed a braid and some stray hair out of Zyrian’s face, his fingertips gliding lightly across her soft cheek as he did so. He drew a bit closer, looking at black tattoo on her face that outlined her eyes and fanned out, leaving elegant marks that ended in sharp points on her cheeks and forehead, the markings completely symmetrical. His body acting of its own accord, his hand traveled down her jaw line to her chin. He observed her features closely, running his thumb just below her lower lip. It was then, as he looked at her soft features and welcoming lips, that he felt something that he wasn’t expecting. A stirring deep within his gut, and even more shocking, the slightest twitch below his waist.

With a jolt, Sten pulled his hand away from Zyrian and was out of the tent with a speed that was shocking for a man his size. He backed away from the tent as if it were some highly venomous viper. Or perhaps it was the one inside that was the viper? The Qunari ran a hand over his face. Taking the sword off of his back, he turned and headed to the woods. He needed to find something to fight. Needed to clear his head.


	4. Chapter 4

_Ugh. What a superb headache,_ Zyrian thought to herself as she woke up, slowly sitting up. She lowered her head and rubbed both of her temples. _I’m_ totally _looking forward to today._ She paused and sniffed the air. Lifting her arm she turned her head and sniffed again, making a slight gagging noise. _I smell gross._ Groaning, she leaned over and grabbed a canvas bag off of the ground, also grabbing the belt that held her longsword and dagger. She stood up slowly so as not to farther aggravate her already throbbing head. When she was sure that she wasn’t going to throw up when she stood, she strapped the belt to her waist and slung the canvas bag over her shoulder. Walking off to the side, she bent over and grabbed her weapons, putting the dagger and sword on her belt in their appropriate places before heading to the front of her tent.

Steeling herself, she pushed back the flap of her tent and winced when the brightness of the sun temporarily blinded her and made her head throb even worse. Once she was more or less used to the light, or as used to it as she was going to get at the moment, she emerged from the tent. Everyone else was already up and about, not that she was surprised. Since everyone knew they wouldn’t be packing up camp today, they were all dressed in their casual attire of Chantry robes for Leliana, and simple shirts and trousers for Sten and Alistair. Morrigan, it seemed, never changed what she was wearing. There was something on the fire for breakfast already, but the thought of food simply revolted her at the moment and made her stomach churn.

Without saying a word to anybody, she turned and headed off. There was a clear pond not far from the campsite, and she wanted nothing more than to bathe in the cold water. Cold water usually helped her get over a hangover. “Come on, Xandir,” she called to her faithful mabari.

Upon hearing his name, Xandir stood up from his spot in front of Zyrian’s tent and trotted to her side.

Alistair looked up when he heard the sound of Zyrian’s voice. He spotted her walking away from the group. He’d been thinking of all the things he had said to her last night. Morrigan and Leliana were right. He deserved his broken nose for being such a jerk to his friend. He’d had a long time to think of the perfect apology, though. He stood up from his spot next to the fire where he had been tending to the morning stew and followed her. “Zyrian!” he called as he jogged to catch up to her. “Zyrian, wait up!”

“Foolish,” Sten said aloud as he watched Alistair give chase.

“Agreed,” Leliana said.

“Fifty silver says she lays him out in one hit,” Morrigan said as she crossed her arms and watched Alistair chase Zyrian down.

“I don’t know,” Leliana replied. “I don’t think she’s going to hurt him. Perhaps she will just tell him to go away?”

“Wistful thinking, Leliana,” Morrigan said, “but the Zyrian I know holds grudges.”

“Zyrian! Wait up!” Alistair called, getting closer to the woman.

_Ugh. My head. Does the buffoon need to yell?_ Zyrian growled to herself as she rubbed her forehead.

“Zyrian! I need to talk to you,” Alistair said when he finally caught up to her, standing behind the rouge.

“Stop,” Zyrian growled, turning toward Alistair, “ _yelling_.” With that, she drew back her hand and shoved the heel of her hand into the man’s solar plexus.

Alistair gasped as all the air was forced from his chest. He fell to the ground wheezing for air, his arms wrapped around his chest.

“Well, I suppose you win, Morrigan,” Leliana said, handing her a small purse of fifty silver.

Snorting, Zyrian turned and walked away from Alistair, leaving him on the ground to wheeze and gasp for air. _Idiot,_ she growled in her mind. She rubbed a hand over her eyes as she continued to walk.

Leliana, Morrigan and Sten watched as Zyrian disappeared into the brush and Alistair slowly began to regain his breath. When Alistair had finally recovered, he stood up and sulked back to the campfire.

“What did she do that for?” he grumbled. “I just wanted to apologize for what I said last night. She didn’t need to fly off the handle like that.”

“She ‘flew off the handle’, as you say, because she is clearly hung over and you were screeching in her ear like some kind of chittering creature,” Morrigan scoffed.

Alistair rubbed the spot on his chest where Zyrian had hit him and furrowed his brow at Morrigan. “Hung over? She was hung over?”

“She drank a _little_ too much wine last night,” Leliana explained, holding her thumb and index finger close together when she said it. “Naturally she is not feeling well right now after as much as she had last night.”

A stab of guilt pierced through Alistair’s chest. “Did… did what I say to her last night hurt her so bad that she wanted to get drunk?”

“Ha! Hardly,” Morrigan jeered from her sitting spot on one of the stumps around the fire. “She didn’t seem that upset, actually. She rather thought that you deserved that broken nose of yours, and ‘tis true that I cannot blame her.”

“You _really_ love kicking me when I’m down, don’t you Morrigan?” Alistair grumbled at her. “Can we reopen that suggestion that you go crawl into a bush, and _die_?”

“I shall do no such thing,” Morrigan replied, putting her hands on the knee that was crossed over the other one in a lady-like fashion. “’Tis far too much fun to mock you.”

Meanwhile, Zyrian had made it to the edge of the cool, clear pond. She dropped the canvas bag next to the bank and took her belt off, setting it and the weapons on a rock close to where she would be bathing. Walking back, she opened the bag and removed a bar of lavender and aloe soap that she had made herself, a brush, and a towel. She set the towel and the brush on the same rock her weapons were on before pulling her nightgown off over her head and stuffing it into the canvas bag. She shivered in the cool air, but the cold was already starting to alleviate her headache.

“Keep watch, Xandir,” she said to the mabari.

Xandir let out a short woof before jumping up onto a boulder and sitting on top of it.

_Freezing cold water, here I come_ , Zyrian thought as she stepped foot into the water. It was a cold as she thought it would be, but she forced herself farther into the water. When she was in up past her bellybutton, she took a deep breath and submerged completely. Ignoring the cold, she swam out farther into the water with the bar of soap in her hand. She resurfaced after swimming for a few feet, using one hand to brush her hair back from her face.

She smiled a bit when she felt the chill of the water reduce her headache from a loud roar to a dull throb. Taking the soap, she rubbed at the slight grime that still clung to her skin. After the battle at Redcliffe, they had been given only a very brief amount of time to wash some of the gore of the walking corpses form their bodies before they had headed off to the castle. She had gotten much of it off, but the foam from the soap was starting to turn brown with each layer of unwashed filth she scrubbed off of her.

Thus she continued until she had scrubbed every square inch of her body. The gentle scent of the soap soothed her headache and her thoughts.

“You know, Xandir,” she said as she scrubbed some soap through her hair, half turning to look at the mabari. “I had the oddest dream last night.”

Xandir looked over at her and cocked his head.

“Yeah. I think I was almost in my tent, and I passed out. Then Sten came over and picked me up off the ground and put me in the tent so, I dunno, I wouldn’t get cold or something. I don’t remember if there was a reason for it. Anywho, after he put me in the tent, he… stayed in there for a while. I can’t really remember if he did anything….”

A flash of what Zyrian assumed to be part of her dream flashed through her mind. “I think he… he leaned over and stroked the side of my face. And it was so gentle. Like the stroke of a feather.” Zyrian paused as she thought about the next part. She faintly remembered him leaning a little closer and running his thumb lightly just below her lip. She thought harder, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember anything past that.

“Such a strange dream,” she said more to herself than to Xandir, furrowing her brow as she tried to push past the haze and remember what had happened next. But her mind seemed to be stuck on that last moment. Stuck on the sight of Sten leaning closer and running his thumb so close to her lip.

Zyrian quickly ducked under the water and scrubbed the soap from her hair. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, trying to convince herself that the way her nipples tightened while she thought of the dream was simply an effect of the cold water. _Ok. Time to forget about the dream. It was just a dream. It didn’t actually happen._

After washing the soap from her hair, she walked back to the bank of the pond and toweled off. She wrapped the towel around her slender form and headed over to her canvas bag. From it, she pulled out a pair of small black panties, which she put on while keeping the towel on. After that, she pulled out a pair of soft, brown leather pants, slipping them on as well. She winced a little at the way the leather rubbed against her sensitive bruise, but she ignored the pain. It wasn’t until she pulled out a brown leather corset that was a few shades darker than her pants that she removed the towel. Already having it pre-laced up the back, she put the corset on and tightened the laces on the front until the edges met, then tied it in a bow at the bottom.

Taking the towel, bar of soap, and canvas bag over to the rock she had placed her things on, she took a pair of shin-high boots she kept for casual wear out of the bag and sat on the rock to put them on, tightening the straps on the sides to keep them on. She folded up the towel and put it in the bag along with the soap when the boots were on before walking over to the bolder and picking up the brush. She ran it through her damp hair, taking care to not catch the many small braids, before putting it in the bag as well. Lastly, she stood up and strapped her belt and weapons back on.

“Time to go back to camp, Xandir,” she called when she was done putting all of her things on and away and had the bag slung back over her shoulder.

Standing, the mabari jumped down from the boulder and joined Zyrian at her side, walking with her back to their camp. Upon her return, she found that the other four were still sitting, or in Sten’s case standing, around the fire. As she expected, Sten was the first one that noticed her, his purple eyes turning on her.

Sten watched as Zyrian sauntered closer in an outfit he had never seen her wear before. The entire outfit was formfitting, though it didn’t go unnoticed by him that she moved fluidly in it. The way she moved, as she returned his gaze with an intense one of her own, reminded the Qunari of the fierce jungle cats of Seheron: A wonder to look at from a distance, but wild, lethal, and untamed up close. When she gave him a playful wink before breaking eye contact with him and disappearing into her tent, he furrowed his brow. He was sure that the wink meant something, but there were still many things about humans that he didn’t understand, and didn’t pretend to understand.

When Zyrian emerged from her tent with something in her hand and walked up to the fire, it was with a smile on her face. “Well,” she said, “I feel much better now.”

Alistair cleared his throat awkwardly. “You… you look much better than you did earlier.”

Zyrian cocked her hip out to the side and tapped, what appeared to be some kind of wrapped up plant, against her chin as she looked up. “Now, was that before, or _after_ I knocked the wind out of you?” she asked, her voice sounding playful and cold at the same time. “ _Or_ , was it before or _after_ I broke your nose?”

“Uh… right.” Alistair lowered his head and cleared his throat again.

“Are you feeling up for something to eat, Zyrian?” Leliana asked. “I made it this time,” she offered.

Zyrian crouched next to the fire and stuck the end of the wrapped up plant into the flames. She shook her head, but couldn’t help but inhale the delicious aroma of whatever was cooking. “It smells delicious, Leliana, and I would, but I can’t.”

“Why not?” Leliana asked, her face puzzled.

“Because,” Zyrian said, pausing to draw the plant bundle close and blow the fire out so the leaves smoldered and let off a thick, acrid smoke, “a night of frivolous drinking is followed by a day of fasting, meditation and reflection while burning sage,” she finished, standing up. “It cleanses the soul. Makes me feel better about making an ass out of myself,” she said with a smile.

Sten looked over at Zyrian when she said this. That was the farthest thing from what he expected of her. He remembered how she had been the other night after drinking too much wine. She was childlike and foolish, and had clearly abandoned her mission. What she had just said conflicted with what he knew about her thus far. “That is… unexpected,” he couldn’t help but say.

“Get to know me, Sten,” Zyrian said as she looked over her shoulder and waved the smoldering sage at him a bit. “I’m amazing. There’s more to me to understand than, oh, say ‘elves are a pointy-eared lithe people that excel at poverty’. Or, ‘I like swords. I follow orders’,” she said.

Sten’s face showed no emotion, but inside he was shocked that she could quote him word for word as she had just done.

“Mayhap it would do you some good to pick my brain once in a while.” She looked at everyone else around the fire and clasped her hands together, grinning cheerfully. “Now then. Anyone that disturbs me before the sun has completely left the sky, male or female, will be punched in the genitals. The only exceptions to this are if someone, aside from Alistair, catches on fire and nobody can think to tell said person to stop, drop and roll while you throw dirt and water on them or the camp is attacked.” She looked down at Xandir. “Xandir, be a good mabari and stay over here,” she said before walking off toward the edge of the camp, far away from the fire and everybody else.

“Did she really have to say ‘aside from Alistair’?” Alistair groaned as the four of them watched her sit down with her back to them and carefully place the sage on a rock next to her.

“Well if she said it, then she felt it necessary to say,” Morrigan remarked, turning her attention back to her bowl of morning stew.

“She isn’t going to eat all day?” Leliana said more to herself than to anyone else. “I wonder if she is going to skip all three meals or permit herself dinner?”

Zyrian crossed her legs, rested her wrists on her knees with her palms facing up and took a deep breath. While she held the breath in, she straitened her spine and closed her eyes. She continued to hold her breath as she expertly collected her thoughts, then banished them to the back of her mind, allowing her mind to ease and go blank, only the occasional thought flickering though. Once this was done, she exhaled slowly, and began her meditation.

Sten said nothing as he stood silently with crossed arms, his eyes trained on the woman sitting apart from the camp. Her posture was absolutely perfect, and the only movement she seemed to make was to breathe. It brought many questions about her to his mind. What she was doing now, he dare say, seemed very… Qunari. He wasn’t one to ask questions, but this was too unusual to him to not. He would ask her about this when she deemed her meditation was over. His resolve to do so was set.


	5. Chapter 5

The entire day, nobody went anywhere near Zyrian. They watched her for a while, but they continued on with their business, and after a while, Alistair, Leliana and Morrigan almost seemed to forget she was there. Sten, though, was a different story. He was always aware that she was sitting just at the edge of the camp. He often found himself staring at her for extended lengths of time, as if expecting her to move. Out of the many times he watched her, or just glanced at her for a moment, never once did she move. It was as if she had turned to stone, and when night finally fell and the sun had gone from the sky, she was in the exact same position she had been in when she first sat down.

Zyrian heard something calling her back. Slowly, her thoughts became normal once more and she returned to herself. It felt like she had only been away in meditation for a few minutes, but the way her muscles protested when she began to move told her a different story as she looked up to the sky. It was dark out, the stars twinkling in the sky. How she seemed to always know when the sun was completely gone from the world, signaling the end of her meditation, she didn’t know. She just always knew.

Letting out a breath, Zyrian began to move slowly. After so many hours without food or drink and without movement, her every muscle protested at movement, and her knees almost refused to bend. Slowly, though, she managed to get herself up and brush the dirt from the seat of her pants. She rolled her shoulders and neck to help ease the stiffness, putting her arms behind her and arching her back to stretch out and warm up her cold muscles.

_Much better,_ she thought when she felt her muscles warm and loosen up. Her stomach growled and she was parched, but other than that, she felt wonderful. She always felt this way after a long day of meditation. Turning around, she made her way back to the fire. The closer she came, the stronger the aroma of stew keeping warm in the pot next to the fire became. She grabbed a bowl with a smile and walked past Leliana as the bard sang and strummed her lute.

“This smells amazing,” Zyrian said as she used the ladle to pour herself a bowl of thick, chunky stew. She sat down once she had her bowl filled to the point of almost spilling.

Leliana stopped singing and looked over at Zyrian with a smile. “It’s venison,” she said. “Morrigan put the herbs in since she knows them better than anyone else here.”

“Is that water or wine?” Zyrian asked as she pointed at a skin sitting next to Leliana.

“It’s just water,” Leliana replied.

“Good, because I need some really bad,” Zyrian said as she grabbed the waterskin and opened it, gulping down the cool, refreshing liquid.

“You must be starving, having sat motionless in the same spot all day,” Morrigan said in her usual aloof manner, though she had a smile on her face.

“That’s a gross understatement,” Zyrian replied as she set the waterskin aside. “I’m so hungry you could pick a worm out of the ground right this second and I wouldn’t hesitate to eat it.”

“Oh really?” Alistair asked with a mischievous grin from his seat on the ground next to Zyrian. He leaned over and plucked a worm out of the ground he had happened to spy just as Zyrian said that.

Zyrian spooned a chunk of potato and venison into her mouth and swallowed it quickly. She held up her right hand. “Hand on my honor, I’d eat a worm if one was presented to me before I finish this bowl of stew.”

Sten snorted. “One shouldn’t make such meaningless promises on something as important as their honor.”

Ignoring Sten, Alistair held the plump nightcrawler he held between his thumb and index finger out to the woman. “Eat up,” he said, smiling stupidly at her.

Everyone stared at Alistair and Zyrian, curious to see what would happen.

After swallowing a mouthful of stew Zyrian had just shoveled into her mouth, without hesitation she took the worm from Alistair and popped it into her mouth, chewing it up while she went back to staring at the fire.

“Ew!” Alistair and Leliana exclaimed when they saw her do that, both of them scooting away from her. Even Morrigan made a face of disgust and leaned back in her seat, even thought she was sitting on the opposite side of the fire. Sten, however, let the faintest of smiles curve his lips in a way that clearly said that he approved of what she had just done.

Zyrian looked at all of them while she chewed up the large worm. “What?” she asked with a cheek full of half chewed up worm. She pointed at her mouth and chewed a couple more times. “Good protein.”

“That is disgusting!” Alistair said, sounding close to retching, though there was a slight laugh in his voice.

“I can’t believe you just did that!” Leliana laughed, her face red.

Zyrian swallowed the worm and shrugged. “That’s nothing. You want to hear horror stories; I went to meditate out in the woods once four miles outside the keep. When I was done meditating, I wasn’t going to wait until I got back to the keep to eat, so I grabbed the first edible thing I saw, which happened to be a slug longer than Sten’s middle finger and about as big around as his thumb. Ate it in three bites.”

There was a simultaneous, disgusted “Oh!” from Alistair, Leliana and Morrigan. Even Sten appeared to cringe a little bit.

“Didn’t taste that great and it was like chewing on rubber. Then you get this weird film in your mouth that takes forever and a half to get out. You don’t have to chew slugs, though, as it turns out,” Zyrian continued, a grin on her face that clearly said that she was enjoying this. “They’re so slimy you can pretty much just take a bite and swallow it.” She scooped up some soup in her spoon. “Goes down pretty easy,” she said before putting the spoonful into her mouth and savoring both the flavor and the looks of shock and disgust from Alistair, Leliana and Morrigan.

“You’re making that up,” Leliana insisted, caught somewhere between laughing and being disgusted. “You have to be!”

Zyrian quickly swallowed a few more spoonfuls of soup. “Again, hand on my honor, I ate a slug. It’s not an experience I’d like to repeat, but I’ll do it if I have to. Besides, don’t Orlesians eat snails?”

“Well, those are snails! They’re not much bigger than the pad of your thumb!” Leliana said in defense. “We don’t eat slugs.”

Zyrian shrugged again. “Eh. Snail, slug, they’re both slimy things that crawl across the ground,” she said before eating more of her stew before it grew cold.

“You are a very strange woman,” Leliana said with a laugh.

“I know,” Zyrian replied. “I come from a long line of strange women. Mostly on my mother’s side of the family.” She ate another spoonful. “My grandmother was the one that meditation thing was passed down through the women of my mother’s side of the family, since the men never had the patients to see it through. It’s also a very long line of female rouges on my mother’s side.”

“Your mother seems like a very interesting woman. I would very much like to meet her one day,” Leliana said.

Alistair winced at that, expecting Zyrian to lapse into depression at any moment.

“Well, you won’t ever meet her,” Zyrian said, eating more stew.

“Why is that?” Leliana asked.

Zyrian stood up and served herself more stew before sitting back down. “Because she’s dead,” she said before eating more stew. “As is my father. And my sister-in-law. And my nephew.”

Leliana’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, I am so sorry, Zyrian. I didn’t know…”

Zyrian shook her head and ate another spoonful. “Don’t be sorry. You aren’t the one that killed them.” She looked down at her stew and swirled it around with her spoon a bit.

“Pardon me for saying, but you don’t seem very broken up about their deaths,” Morrigan observed.

Zyrian shrugged as she stared into her stew. “I had my cry, but crying isn’t going to bring them back. Being sad all the time isn’t going to bring them back. Besides, they wouldn’t have wanted me to mourn them all the time.” She looked between Morrigan, Leliana and Alistair, not bothering to look at Sten. For once since she had come back to the fire, her voice was serious. “I think about them, and it hurts, that’s true enough, but I’m a Grey Warden now. I have a duty to Ferelden to do what I can to stop the Blight. Stopping to cry about their deaths isn’t productive, and it won’t help. It may not have been the longest time since they’ve died, but everyone dies eventually. Nobody is an exception to this. It’s best to just except this inevitable truth and hope that the ones you cared about that died are in a better place than to lie around drowning in your own sorrow saying ‘woe is me, woe is me,” she said, waving her spoon in the air as she said the last part.

From across the fire, Morrigan let out a smug chuckle. “It seems to me, Alistair, that you could take a page or two from our junior Warden here.”

“Oh ha-ha, Morrigan. Still making fun of me for being sad that someone close to me died, are you?” Alistair growled sarcastically.

“Of course I am. ‘Tis good fun.”

Zyrian ignored the rest of the conversation between Alistair and Morrigan, as she often did when they started on like this. Leliana had started to sing again anyways, so instead, she focused on filling her gut and listening to the bard. She didn’t notice as Xandir inched closer and closer to her, though. The dog pretended like he wasn’t going to beg for food, so he moved slowly, scooting closer and closer.

Zyrian only noticed him when he leaned his massive chest right against the massive bruise on her thigh. And he didn’t lean against her slowly. Rather, he more or less shouldered into her as he put his head in her lap. The woman cried out in pain so suddenly she tossed her bowl of stew and made everyone around the fire jump, but none more so than Xandir, the dog yelping and stumbling backward

“Bloody dog!” Zyrian yelled as she held one arm stiff at her side and gripped her knee tight with her other hand to avoid touching the bruise and making it hurt worse. She locked her jaw and gnashed her teeth against the horrifying pain, forcing her hurried meal to stay down.

“Are you certain you don’t want me to heal that?” Morrigan offered again.

“Heal what?” Alistair and Sten asked at the same time.

“Zyrian was hit in the leg with a mace at Redcliffe right before we managed to get down the hill to the fight in front of the chantry,” Leliana explained as she placed a comforting hand on Zyrian’s back. “She showed the bruise to Morrigan and I last night.”

“I’m fine, Morrigan, thank you,” Zyrian replied through gritted teeth. “It’ll feel better once it’s lanced and drained. Once all the extra blood is drained from it, I’ll heal in a few days. It’s not life threatening and nothing is broken. It just hurts _really_ bad when it’s touched. My body can heal this itself. Besides,” she grinned past the pain, “pain builds character.”

“Fine, fine,” Morrigan replied. “Continue to suffer, if you so please.”

“I _do_ so please. Thank you,” she said, unclenching her jaw as the pain started to fade.

Alistair looked over at Xandir. “I think you terrified your mabari,” he said as he watched the dog cower behind Leliana.

Zyrian looked over at the cowering mabari.

“Can’t blame him,” Alistair continued. “You’re terrifying when you yell.” Though he didn’t show it, he was relieved that Zyrian was willing to acknowledge that he was there and talking instead of hitting him yet again. _Maybe she’s not so mad at me anymore for being such a jerk the other night,_ he thought to himself. True though it was that she had also said things that hurt him, he knew it was his fault. He was the one that started the argument. She had just been petting Xandir, minding her own business, when he’d walked up and started to yell at her.

Because of this, he expected no apology from her when he managed to get her alone long enough to apologize himself for what had been said. An apology from her would be nice, and he wouldn’t turn one down if she offered it, granted she didn’t spontaneously decide to hate him later and injure him again. Still, for now he was happy that she wasn’t being aggressive toward him for the moment.

“Awe, did I scare you, Xandir?” Zyrian cooed to the mabari, holding a hand out to him.

Xandir whimpered a bit and started to edge closer to Zyrian.

“Poor puppy,” Zyrian said, rubbing Xandir’s cheek. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Moving closer, Xandir sat next to her and leaned against her side as she pet him, being careful to not touch her thigh.

“Well. That provided a moment of amusement,” Morrigan said, wiping a piece of venison off of her shoe that had landed there when Zyrian had tossed her stew practically halfway across the campsite. She stood up. “With that said I believe I will retire for the night.” Without another word, she headed up to her part of the camp.

“Morrigan,” Zyrian called after her. “Could you make some more poultices when you have the time? We’re running low and you’re the only one here with knowledge enough to make them.

“As you wish,” Morrigan replied, waving a blasé hand in the air as she said so.

“Thank you!” Zyrian called after the witch. She leaned against Xandir and held her arms out. “Well. Nice night, yes? Little cold, but at least it’s not raining.”

“How do you Fereldens tolerate all the cold and rain?” Leliana asked. “It makes me long for Orlais. It is much warmer there, and it doesn’t smell like dogs.”

“What’s wrong with the smell of dogs?” Zyrian asked. She leaned over and buried her nose in the fur on Xandir’s neck as she hugged him, much to the dog’s delight at the attention, and inhaled his scent. “Ah. The stink of a wardog,” she said with a grin.

Xandir let out one, deep bark, his tail wagging.

“Ugh! I don’t see how you can do that,” Leliana said. “I can smell him from here, and it is by far nothing I would want to stick my nose into and inhale as you just did.”

“It’s an acquired like,” Alistair said, trying not to move his face too much since his nose and parts of his upper cheeks were sensitive from having his nose broken.

Zyrian nodded. “Everyone has their little quirks depending on where they came from. We Fereldens as a whole don’t mind the cold, or the dirt or the smell of dogs, while you Orlesians,” she motioned at Leliana with one hand, “prefer horses and flowers, and _he_ ,” she turned and pointed at Sten. She paused as she looked at him and tried to think of something to him that would be like the smell of dog to Fereldens. After a few seconds she waved at Sten dismissively. “Whatever he likes.”

Sten scowled a bit at that. Not so much for her lack of saying anything, but more the way she waved at him then turned away from him and continued to converse with the bard as if he wasn’t there. He wasn’t accustomed to being ignored. When Leliana and Alistair were around him, he noticed the way they were constantly shifting their gazes toward him, as if waiting for him to attack at any moment. They didn’t trust him. Whether they realized it or not, they made sure they didn’t turn their backs on him. At least not within striking distance. They also never passed within striking distance of him. Little things like that.

And whether she realized it or not, Sten had noticed that Zyrian did none of these things. The uneasy glances given to him by the others in camp, save for the dog, told him that they saw him as some kind of dangerous creature. The way the female Warden acted around him, though, seemed to be as she would act around any other human of her race. She would acknowledge his being next to the fire, then turn her back to him to speak with the others.

On more than one occasion she had been occupied with doing something else and accidentally ran right into him. This would never happen with the others. They made sure to always know where he was. And when she did occasionally run into him, she would look at him, apologize, then go right back to what she was doing and walk right past him.

This puzzled Sten to no end, though he never let his puzzlement show. Zyrian didn’t treat him like most humans treated his kind. From what he had seen of her behavior around him, she seemed to consider him just another person. A very large person, but a person nonetheless. Never once had she treated him as some possibly wild animal that needed to have a cautious eye kept on, lest it attack.

Questions about this occasionally crept like an unwanted visitor into his mind. Sten wasn’t used to being curious about something. Or someone, as it were. He wasn’t a naturally curious person. He followed orders without wondering why. He did what he was told, and he was good at it. Never had he wanted to ask a comrade about why they acted the way they did. Why they did their little oddities. But perhaps it was because all of his comrades had always been of the Qun, and were thus like him with the same mindset and the same way of thinking. Zyrian was _not_ of the Qun, that was more than clear. He often questioned if she knew what she was supposed to be doing. If she knew what her purpose was and where her duties lie. But other times she had moments of astonishing clarity about what was going on that seemed near prophetic. She was like two entirely different people in one body. One foolhardy and innocuous, the other calculating and lethal, much as a Qunari.

Zyrian was a paradox in herself as a human from what Sten had learned and seen about them thus far. She didn’t fit in like others did. Most humans were afraid of that which they didn’t understand, or could not comprehend. She didn’t follow a set path. Instead, she seemed to like to forge ahead into the unknown and face its mysteries head-on with a brashness that bordered on utter stupidity. He sometimes wondered if she even knew what self-preservation was. If she did, she didn’t do much to show it.

The two women spoke to each other for a while longer before Leliana turned in, leaving only Alistair, Sten, Zyrian and Xandir at the fire. Alistair stood up, taking the opportunity of having a minimal amount of people out to confront Zyrian. He cleared his throat as he stood in front of her. “Zyrian, I would like to talk to you.” He paused and looked at Sten, the giant standing stoically to the side and staring at the fire. He looked back to Zyrian. “Alone,” he added.

“Go to bed, Alistair,” Zyrian said, her voice back to sounding cold and angry. “We’re headed to the Circle tomorrow.”

Alistair furrowed his brow at that. “The Circle? We have to go to Denerim. You heard what Bann Teagan said.”

“And the Circle is _on the way_ to Denerim,” Zyrian replied, looking up at Alistair with an angry spark in her eyes. “Unless you think it is some amazing idea to pass up the Circle, go to Denerim, then have to come all the way back to the Circle afterward.”

Alistair didn’t say anything as he thought.

“It’s faster to just go to the Circle while we’re passing right by it and recruit the mages, _then_ head to Denerim. The arl can wait a day or so.”

_The arl can wait a day or so._ Those words struck a cord in Alistair and he furrowed his brow. He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth, completely forgetting that he had just wanted to apologize to her. “The arl can wait? The arl can wait! Did you forget that he could die any day now?” Alistair thundered.

Zyrian stood up. “Did _you_ forget that we have to go to the mages, dwarves _and_ the elves for assistance against the Blight before it swallows up Ferelden?” she retorted. “This is going to take months, Alistair. If I’m not mistaken, _you_ put _me_ in charge of where we go, and _I_ say we’re stopping at the Circle. End of story. Now go to bed, Alistair, and try to stop letting your emotions get in the way of your better judgment. You’re a Warden. Act like one.”

Zyrian’s words threw a bucket of ice water on the fire of Alistair’s anger. The scowl dropped from his face as he stared at her, the woman staring back at her with venom in her eyes.

“You’re emotions have already gotten you in enough trouble. Maybe you should learn how to control them,” she said, refusing to break eye contact with him.

Alistair only stared at her for a few more seconds before lowering his eyes. Zyrian was right. Again. Lowering his head, he walked past her to his tent without another word.

Zyrian shook her head. “That man,” she mumbled to herself, sitting back down. “‘Always try to be nice’,” she whispered to herself, imitating her mother’s voice as she took a stick and poked mindlessly at some of the embers in the fire. “‘Even if you don’t want to be. You are a woman, and as such a born master of bottling your emotions. Later, you may remove the cork and take out those emotions in battle. You may not want to always be nice to someone, but if it is someone that you have to work with, do your best.’ Well, I’m trying, mother. I really am.”

Sten watched Zyrian as she spoke to herself and prodded at the fire. She seemed unaware that he was still standing only six feet from her.

Zyrian sighed. “Damned female expectations,” she muttered. She snorted. “Like I’m really going to go for that domestic crap. _Men_. Always looking for some little girlie that’ll do whatever they tell her. As far as they care, Zyrian, you’re just a pretty face.”

_What is she talking about?_ Sten thought to himself when Zyrian’s conversation with herself. He noticed the way her eyes stared at the fire, as if she wasn’t looking at the fire, but more like she was looking past it. And past whatever was past the fire. Her gaze was distance. Unseeing.

“Oh, another suitor?” Zyrian continued to herself, oblivious to the fact that Sten was still standing next to the fire and could hear everything she was saying. “Oh, the son of a Tyrn, is he?” she said, her voice sarcastic. She put an elbow on her knee and rested her cheek on her hand. “Well hello, ser. What are your intentions with me? Oh? You want me to bear you many sons and give you backrubs every night?” She growled low under her breath. “Get out of my sight before I take this dagger and geld you like the hog you are.”

The more she spoke to herself, the more confused Sten became. Finally, he cleared his throat to catch her attention.

When Zyrian heard someone clear their throat, she snapped out of her thoughts with a shake of her head and looked to where she had heard the noise. She had to look up when she saw it was Sten. “Oh. When did you get here, Sten?” she asked.

“I have yet to move since before you stopped meditating,” Sten replied, his voice as emotionless and hollow as it always was.

“Really? Hm. I must have forgotten you were there since you never move or make any noise,” Zyrian replied nonchalantly, turning her gaze back on the fire and putting her cheek back on her hand. Once again, she continued to poke at the embers in the fire.

“What… were you just talking about?” Sten asked slowly, unaccustomed to being the one to ask questions of Zyrian.

“Oh. That?” Zyrian sighed, keeping her eyes on the fire. “Let me tell you a little something about human culture that you probably don’t know, Sten. Consider it knowledge for the sake of knowledge or just me prattling on like I do.

“I’m not sure how Qunari choose their mates, but with humans, especially humans in higher standing such as my parents, the parents like to be the ones to pick out what they consider to be suitable husbands for their daughters. Such was the way of _my_ parents. Often times parents that do this look for husbands for their daughters who are also from higher standing families, such as the son of an arl or tyrn or what-have-you.” She huffed through her nose.

“I can’t tell you how many ‘suitors’ my mother and father brought to me. The first time they brought one when I was… oh… I was sixteen, I believe, they naturally expected me to be a good little girl and be happy that they had ‘found me a husband’. And this man was, oh, perhaps somewhere between 10-20 years my senior. I don’t quite remember anymore, but that’s not the point. Anyway, it came to a shock to them when I challenged this man to a duel. When he refused saying that it was not a wife’s place to fight, but to serve her man and bear him children,” she smirked amusedly, “I kicked him in the genitals as hard as I could and walked away. After that I found out that my mother, being a woman of the bow herself, had hauled him up by the back of his shirt and tossed him out of the keep. She’d had no idea the man’s thoughts on women fighting.”

Sten listened silently to what Zyrian told him. When he opened his mouth to say something, Zyrian held up a hand to him to silence him without looking at him. He closed his mouth, wondering how she knew that he was about to speak.

“I am no normal woman, Sten. I am not satisfied with living as some man’s wife to whom I hold no respect. Thankfully my parents weren’t the kind to just haul off and promise me to some greasy pig despite the many, many men I rejected.” She pulled her stick out of the fire and observed how the tip of it glowed the same cherry red as the embers in the heart of the fire. She twirled the stick around a little, watching the tendrils of smoke the stick let off rise higher into the air.

“One suitor they brought they were absolutely sure I would accept, so they left he and I alone to talk. Moments after my parents were out of earshot he started making very inappropriate, vulgar advances on me.”

Sten scowled at that.

“I warned him to stay away from me and to leave, but he was one of those men that had never been rejected by a woman and didn’t know how to take ‘no’ for an answer, so he tried to force himself on me, saying that if I would not open my legs for him, then he would do it himself.”

Sten flexed his hands when he heard this. Such a thing was a sentence of death under the Qun. Women may not be warriors, but the men were, and the Qun demanded that they keep their women safe. He clenched his jaw, almost not wanting to hear what happened next in this tale.

Zyrian stuck the stick back into the fire, taking her time in telling her story. “I grabbed his arm and flipped him over my shoulder when he tried. Got down on the floor next to him and bashed his face into the floor until you could barely tell his face was a face anymore. Then I flipped him over, pulled down his pants, took my dagger, and cut off his testicles.”

Sten’s eyes widened a bit at that. That was the farthest thing from what he expected to hear.

“I wanted to make sure no woman had to suffer him again, and that he would never have children that could end up the same filth as he was.” Zyrian smiled and chuckled a bit. “I thought a life as half a man was a better punishment for his unwanted attempts at me than simply killing him. I made sure he would never have any dignity again.” She looked up when she didn’t hear Sten say anything in response to what she just told him.

Sten remained silent as he took in what Zyrian had said. On one hand, she had done what people under the Qun do not do: Go against that which you are supposed to be. On the other hand, had she been a lesser person and had simply submitted to this man, she would have been raped. Or, his mind argued to that point, if she had done what was expected of her in the first place, she likely would have never met that man.

There was yet another argument in his mind, though. If she hadn’t fought… if she _had_ just done what was expected of her, she might be dead with the rest of her family right now. She may not be here.

_He_ may have never been freed from that cage.

“Why is it that humans are not content to do what is expected of them?” Sten found himself saying.

Zyrian shook her head and sighed. “You should learn to not be so close-minded, Sten,” was all she said. She was too tired to be angry and try to prove to Sten that humans had their reasons for doing what they did. When she was tired, and especially after a day of meditation, she felt no need to jest. To poke and prod and try and get a rise out of people. Right now she preferred to speak calmly and logically. “You might learn something.”

“And you are _not_ close-minded?” Sten replied, his voice emotionless as always, though inside he was insulted by what she just said.

“Remember that time I asked you to tell me about your people, and you simply said ‘no’?” Zyrian asked, turning her blue eyes up to look into Sten’s purple ones. “Have _you_ ever once asked me about _my_ people?” She smiled when Sten hesitated. Though his face betrayed nothing, his eyes told her that he was trying to think of something to say to that. Zyrian stood up. “Good night, Sten,” she said before heading toward her tent.

It wasn’t until Zyrian had been in her tent for a few minutes that Sten remembered he had planned to ask her about why she meditates, but had forgotten entirely.


	6. Chapter 6

The morning was spent packing up the camp and getting ready to head out. Thankfully, Bodahn was kind enough to let them load all of their things into his wagon so that they didn’t have to carry them on their person at all times.

“Well since we’re traveling with you good folks,” Bodahn had said, “I figure it would only be nice of me to let you keep your things in my wagon when not in use. I’m sure it would be awkward to, oh, I don’t know, fight a band of roaming bandits with all that on your backs.”

Sten and Zyrian, as usual, were the first ones up and about. They seemed to almost have the same sleep schedule. Go to bed at night a few hours after everyone else had already gone to sleep, then wake up at the crack of dawn. Only when Sten woke up, he usually walked off and disappeared for a time, returning just before everyone else started to wake up. Zyrian always assumed he went off to train or meditate.

This morning, Zyrian sat next to the fire by herself, a small painting in her hands. Sten had left to do whatever it was he did when he left, and everyone else was still asleep. She reflected on the painting of a rebel queen with her flowing red hair. She stood upon a ruined golden chariot, holding her battle standard in her hand. A warrior, _and_ a woman. She was still a bit sore about what Sten had said about women being warriors, but she was still far angrier at Alistair for being a grade A ass. Originally it had been she who was fascinated by the painting, but as she looked at it, she began to wonder.

She knew Sten had an eye for detail. She had seen how intently he looked at a battlefield or the design on a piece of armor. He looked far closer at things than many people. However, she had never seen him look at a painting, and it made her curious as to whether or not he would look at one as closely as he looked at other things. Surely a man with a keen eye such as his could appreciate the bold brushstrokes that made her hair, or the much more subtle mixing of colors on the canvas that made her skin look soft and radiant.

“I really _should_ take up a pencil again,” she muttered to herself.

 

 

**In the fade**

Zyrian put her hand on the pedestal and jumped from one island in the Fade to another once more. But this island was different. This one had been opened up when she had defeated demons from two other islands. This was where one of her friends was. She knew it.

When she was transported from one island to another, she paused to gain her balance. The transportation was mildly disorienting, but she soon recovered. Firmly grasping both her dagger and her longsword she moved carefully down the path lightly worn into the ground. This place was strange and she didn’t like it. She was always expecting things to jump out at her. Demons. Abominations. Spirits. Other dreamers that had gone mad here. She had seen it all and hadn’t faltered. She’d cut a swathe through the islands of the Fade to get to her friends. This place was dangerous. She didn’t know how long one had to be here to go insane.

Turning a corner, she saw him. Sten. He was standing in what appeared to be a small campsite with two other Qunari sitting on the ground. She furrowed her brow. _So the demon is doing to them as he did to me._ The demon had shown her visions of Duncan saying that the darkspawn had been defeated and that all was well. She hadn’t believed it for a second. Blurry though her mind was in this place, she knew that Duncan was dead. Fallen at Ostagar, and that this was all the lie of a demon.

Flexing her hands around the hilts of her weapons, she moved closer to Sten.

“Shanadan,” Sten said when he saw her approach.

“Who are you talking to?” one of the Qunari sitting off to the side asked.

“Don’t bother the sten. Isn’t it your turn to cook?” the other Qunari asked the first.

“Cook what?” the first Qunari asked. His voice deeper than the second’s, though not as deep as Sten’s. “There’s no food in this miserable, frozen country.”

“Pashaara!” Sten said as he stood from his position knelt on the ground. He turned and looked at the others. “We have a guest. Make room at the fire.”

Zyrian could see that Sten was clearly under the influence of this illusion, but something one of the Qunari said made her pause. “Why do they call you ‘ _the_ sten’?” she asked.

“The same reason they call you, ‘the Warden,” Sten replied as he looked back at her.

“We’ve been days in this place,” the first unnamed Qunari said. “There’s no sign of any threat. The Arishok’s report was wrong. Can we not go home?”

Sten looked back at the men. “No.”

The first Qunari sighed, clearly unhappy.

Zyrian shook her head, pushing her urge to ask questions aside. “None of this is real, Sten,” she said.

After a slight pause, Sten looked back at her. “I know.”

“You can’t stay here,” she said, relieved to hear that Sten knew this to be an illusion. “We have things that need done.”

“We’ll move camp at dawn. If that comes,” Sten said.

“Huh?” Zyrian said in confusion. _I thought… what?_

“We may not live through the night, with the karashok cooking,” the second Qunari grumbled.

Zyrian furrowed her brow. “This isn’t…” She paused. _How to get through to him_. “This is a cage, Sten,” she said. “Just like back in Lothering. None of this is real. It’s an illusion brought on by a sloth demon.”

“Here, or Lothering, or Orlais, it’s all the same. Far from home. One place is no better than any other,” Sten said, his voice somber.

_Think, Zyrian, think!_ Zyrian yelled to herself in her mind. _How do I get through to… wait. I got it._ Steeling her expression Zyrian stood tall and proud. “I’m still in charge here, Sten. On your feet, soldier. We’re leaving by my command.”

“Ha! Look,” the first Qunari said, “the little thing thinks it can order the sten around!”

“Good luck with that, kabethari,” the second one scoffed bemusedly.

“The sten gave his oath to aid me,” she said, turning her eyes on Sten. “You are bound to that oath.”

Sten paused and let out a bit of a sigh. “I did,” he said as if remembering something long forgotten. She saw as realization lit his purple eyes.

At this, the other Qunari stood up. “You can’t abandon your post,” the second said.

“Stand aside,” Sten said, looking at his comrades. “I would hate to see you all die again.”

“No!” the first growled. “We won’t let you leave us again!”

Turning suddenly hostile, the two Qunari drew their blades and attacked. Zyrian had noticed something about this place, though. Things here, though unreal and twisted, seemed to be easier to kill than things in real life. Lunging forward, the woman took on one of the large Qunari while Sten took the other. It wasn’t long before both were defeated, vanishing into thin air once they were felled.

Sten sheathed his blade, and simply stood there for a moment. “And yet… this brings me no peace.” He turned to Zyrian, a hint of distinct sorrow in his eyes. “I wish to leave this place,” he said. When his body began to glow, he held up his hands, watching as his fingers started to slowly turn clear and vanish from sight, the same thing happening to his hands, crawling up his arms. “No! More trickery?” he growled as he watched himself disappear. “What is happening?” He looked back at Zyrian and took a step toward her. He didn’t make it to her though before he vanished from sight.

When Sten disappeared, Zyrian furrowed her brow. Just then. He’d seemed… panicked. Something she’d never seen in him before. A thousand different questions pricked at her mind, begging to be asked. For now, they would all have to wait. Before she could ask anything, she had to find the others. Once this was over and done with and the Circle was either saved or damned, then she would have the opportunity to ask questions.

 

**\--- Elsewhere ---**

 

Sten looked around in confusion when he reappeared somewhere he was not familiar with. It was an open clearing, riddled with strange clusters of blue spikes that jutted up from the ground and glowed softly with white light. He turned circles as he looked, trying to find Zyrian. She had just been in front of him but moments ago, and now she was gone, and he was somewhere he didn’t know.

The Qunari felt his heart beat hard in his chest. He was alone. He looked closely for a way to escape. There was a strange structure that looked like a doorway, but beyond it was nothing. He was alone in a place that he could not escape, with no enemy before him that could be taken on with his blade.

He felt a pang of uncharacteristic panic run through him. No training with the Qun could have ever prepared him for something like this. _Am I to stay trapped here forever?_ Sten thought almost hopelessly to himself.

 

“What’s this?” the Sloth demon mused when Zyrian joined the group. “A wayward minion? An escaped slave?” The demon laughed. “Well you do have some gall, but I’m afraid you all have to go back now.”

“You tried to keep us apart,” Leliana said with a bit of a smile. “You led us from each other because you fear us. Don’t you?”

“I am here,” Sten said as he drew his weapon, his voice sounding determined, though Zyrian’s ears picked up a hint of anger as well. “And it is time to finish this. I have had enough of cages.”

“You _will not_ hold us, demon,” Wynne stated, sounding like the stubborn old woman she was. “We found each other in this place and you _cannot_ stand against us!”

“If you go back quietly,” the demon said in a voice that sounded bored and dull, completely non-dissuaded by what they said, “I’ll do better this time. I’ll make you much happier.”

Zyrian drew her weapons and held them up, crouching into a trained stance. “I make my own happiness, Demon, and I will not fall for your tricks. My mind is stronger than your illusions.”

The demon held his arms out a bit. “Can’t you think about someone other than yourself? I’m hurt. So very, very hurt.”

“I _always_ think of others before myself,” Zyrian growled. “If I never thought of others, than my friends would not be standing behind me. I am no weak human to bend knee to the will of a demon. This, ends, now.”

“You wish to battle me? So be it… you will learn to bow to your betters, mortal!” the demon growled as it rolled its shoulders and crouched. Before their very eyes, the form of the demon shifted into that of the largest ogre she had ever seen. It opened its gaping maw and roared at her, hoping to instill fear in her soul.

Opening her mouth, Zyrian let out her own roar that would rival even Sten’s, and leapt at the demon.

 

 

“You defeated the demon. I never thought… I never expected you to free yourself, to free us both,” Niall said in utter disbelief. “When you return… take the Litany of Adralla from my… body. It will protect you from the worst of the blood magic.”

“Your body?” Zyrian asked in confusion.

“I cannot go with you. I have been here far too long,” the mage said. “For you and your friends it will have been an afternoon’s nap. Your bodies wouldn’t have wasted away in the real world while your spirit lay in the hands of a demon.”

“So… you’re dead?” Zyrian asked.

“Every minute I was here, the sloth demon was feeding off of me. Using my life to fuel the nightmares of this realm. There is so little of me left….” He paused and looked down. “I was never meant to save the Circle, or… survive its troubles. I am dying. It is as simple as that.”

Zyrian’s gaze softened upon hearing that. Her first reaction was to tell him that he could surely be saved, but when she saw the look in his eye, she knew better. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I could not rescue you along with my companions.”

“I do not fear what may come,” he reassured her. “They say we return to the Maker in death, and that isn’t such a terrible thing. My only regret is that I could not save the Circle. But you… you can,” he said hopefully. “Take the Litany off of my… my body, when you return. It is important!”

“This I swear to do,” Zyrian replied.

“I am not… a hero,” he said. “Perhaps trying to be one was foolish.”

“Ordinary people are capable of doing great things when they have to,” Zyrian said. “Do not beat yourself up over this. You did what you could. That is all anybody can ask of a person.”

He smiled a bit at that. “Dark times, greater acts of heroism, eh? You may be right. Before I was taken to the Circle, my mother said I was meant for greatness. That I would be more than my ancestors could have ever dreamed. I hope I haven’t disappointed her.”

“I’m sure your mother is smiling upon you as we speak, Niall. Your death will not be in vain,” Zyrian said as she put a hand on the man’s shoulder and gave it a light squeeze.

Niall gave her a small smile, seeming to feel a bit better at her encouraging words. “It is time for us both to be on our way. Remember the Litany of Adralla. The Circle is all that matters now. Thank you and goodbye… friend.”


	7. Chapter 7

Zyrian had hoped for a few minutes of peace to herself once they had returned from the Circle tower to their camp a few miles away from the shore of Lake Calenhad. A little time for inward reflection and silence. No such thing would happen. She knew this when she saw Sten’s shadow fall over her.

“The Blight,” he said, sounding rather urgent. “How will you stop it?”

“By killing the archdemon,” she replied, refusing to stand up and instead turning half way around and looking up at him.

“Is that _all_?” he growled. “It is surrounded by an ocean of darkspawn. How will you reach it? If you reach it, how will you slay it? You _say_ you are a Grey Warden,” he said almost accusingly. “I have heard stories of this order.”

Zyrian didn’t fail to catch the tone of his voice. “You doubt that I’m really a Warden?” she asked. As if her fits of waking up in the middle of the night screaming from nightmares of the darkspawn and her ability to sense them before anyone saw them wasn’t proof enough.

“Great strategists and peerless warriors. That is what we hear of the Wardens. So far I am not impressed.”

“Be unimpressed all you want, Sten. I’m not here to impress you.”

“Evidently not,” he said. “It remains only to see what you _are_ here for.”

Zyrian stood up and squared off with Sten. She was sick and tired of his constant criticisms. “I’m here to gather an army to help _get_ me to the archdemon so it _can_ be killed, or did you forget about the pact I just forged not an hour ago with the mages for assistance? You may doubt my gender. You may doubt my abilities, but it was not _you_ that saved yourself from the Fade. It was not _you_ that that saved you from ending up like Niall. Your mind is weak, _Qunari_ ,” Zyrian hissed, saying the word as if it left a bitter taste in her mouth. “To succumb so easily to the foolery of a _demon._ ” She paused. “I thought you were better than that.”

Turning, Zyrian let out a short, loud whistle for Xandir. The mabari ran to her side obediently and without another word she walked away with her dog on her heels.

Alistair, who had been sitting at the side of his tent, had heard the whole thing. He watched as Zyrian stormed away with Xandir and couldn’t help but smile a bit. It might be a bad thing, but he couldn’t help but feel happy that he was now not the only person the woman was angry at. And the way she had so boldly stood up to the Qunari…. It wasn’t just her beauty that stole his breath away.

He leaned back against the support rod of the tent when he could no longer see Zyrian. He lightly rubbed his nose. Wynne had gladly healed for him earlier, though he didn’t tell her how he had gotten it.

_I have to find a way to apologize to her,_ he thought to himself. He couldn’t stand seeing her angry at him, though he did take some consolation in seeing her angry at Sten.

Sten stared after Zyrian as she walked away. _Your mind is weak, Qunari._ He didn’t let it show, but the words stung him. He had indeed been weak to fall prey to the demon. Not only that, but that was the first time in the two weeks that he had known her that she had referred to him as ‘Qunari’ instead of ‘Sten’. He had had many humans refer to him as such. But having it come from her, and the way she said it… it was different. Wrong. Perhaps he had appeared ungrateful with what he had just said, but he was no good at speaking with those not of the Qun.

The Qunari turned his light purple eyes to the fire, the soft light dancing across his hard features. He clenched his jaw and crossed his arms. To have such a weakness pointed out by a human female… it not only shamed him, but it made him wonder how it was that _she_ had managed to resist everything the demon threw at her. He furrowed his brow as he thought about it. He meditated every day. He trained rigorously. He devoted himself to the Qun.

And yet he had been unable to resist the call of the sloth demon while the human _had_. He clenched his fists and flexed his jaw. His mind was in turmoil as he tried to come up with a reason as to why he had failed in the Fade. _I will speak to her about it when she returns,_ he thought.

‘When she returns’ turned out to take two hours. When she did come back it was with three dead rabbits in her hand, Xandir carrying two others. Her arrival did not go unnoticed by Sten nor Alistair.

Alistair stood up. If he was going to apologize, he had told himself, it was going to be now. Taking a deep breath, he steeled his nerves, a bit nervous about having to apologize to her. He let out the breath slowly, opened his eyes and turned toward Zyrian. He stopped dead in his tracks, though, when he saw that Sten was already standing in front of her.

Zyrian scowled at Sten. “What do you want?” she growled. “Come to insult me again?”

“I wish you to bear no grudge against me,” Sten said simply as he looked down at her. “It was not my intent to offend. I apologize for not thanking you for saving me from the Fade.”

Alistair watched the two closely. He wanted to see how Zyrian would react to something like this.

Zyrian crossed her arms and glared up at Sten. “And why, exactly, should I forgive you?”

“Because I seek knowledge that only you can provide me with,” Sten admitted truthfully. He needed to know how she had been able to steel her mind against the demon.

Alistair stood anxiously, waiting to see what Zyrian would say. _That guy makes apologizing for being an ass look easy,_ he thought to himself.

Zyrian stared intently into Sten’s eyes. She saw nothing but sincerity. He truly was asking her to teach him something. “Alright,” Zyrian said. “I accept your apology. What is it that you need to know?”

_That easy?_ Alistair thought in surprise. He was sure that she would throw insults at him, or perhaps punches. Or just ignore him. He hadn’t expected her to accept the Qunari’s apology so easily.

“How were you able to see so easily through the ruse of the demon?” Sten asked. It was a question he had wrestled with for hours, but he had come no closer to an answer to that question than when he had first asked it to himself.

“Hm. There’s no simple answer to that,” Zyrian replied as she shifted her weight to one leg. The one without the bruise on it. She paused and looked away, as if in thought. Finally she looked back at him and said, “Tell me, Sten. What do you think of when you meditate?”

“The Qun,” Sten replied. “My place within the whole.”

“Wrong!” Zyrian exclaimed quickly, slapping a hand on Sten’s armor protected chest.

Sten furrowed his brow. “Wrong?” he repeated. “What is wrong?”

“I’ll demonstrate.” She turned to the side and pointed to a spot farther away from the camp. “Go wait over there,” she said as she began to pass Sten. She lowered her hand as she walked past him and looked him in the eye. “I’ll meet you over there,” she said before breaking eye contact and jogging over to her tent.

Choosing not to question overtly, Sten moved over to where she had indicated.

With Sten out of the way, Alistair moved over to Zyrian’s tent. He could hear her rummaging around inside, and wondered what she was doing. When she emerged she sprinted past him, seeming to not notice that he was standing there, and crouched over by the fire. Alistair approached her and cleared his throat. “Zyrian, I…”

“Not now, Alistair,” she said. “I’m busy.” She pulled the two bundles of sage away from the fire and blew on the ends so that they smoldered and let off their thick smoke.

Alistair didn’t get another word in before Zyrian stood up and jogged back over toward Sten. The man rubbed his face. _The longer I don’t apologize, the harder it’s going to be to convince her that I really am sorry,_ he thought. He had tried many times to apologize for what he had said as they traveled to the Circle. For the first few days she flat out refused to talk to him. After that, it was just bad timing. She was always doing something right as he was about to try and talk to her.

Zyrian stopped next to Sten with a bundle of sage in each hand. “Sit down,” she said, motioning to the ground. “And cross your legs.”

Doing as she said without question, Sten sat cross-legged on the ground.

Zyrian set a bundle of sage before him. “Now,” she said, “put your wrists on your knees with your hands open and your palms facing up.” She sat down herself and crossed her legs and did as she had just told Sten to do. “Like this,” she said once she had her hands in place.

“What exactly is wrong with the way I meditate?” Sten asked. “Surely it cannot be that different from what you do as you meditate with your Maker.”

“I _don’t_ meditate with the Maker,” Zyrian said. She paused and uncrossed her legs. Leaning over she repositioned Sten’s sage slightly before sitting back down the way she had been before. “My meditation is all about energy.”

“Energy?” Sten echoed.

“Yes,” Zyrian replied. “There are many types of energy housed within the body, the dominant being good and bad,” she explained. “You don’t want the bad energy. That’s why it’s bad. But you _do_ want the good energy. As much of it as you can get. You must understand, this is a meditation of the soul, not the mind,” she said as she looked over at him. “This is about releasing yourself from yourself.” She noticed how Sten’s brow furrowed just the slightest bit. He was confused. “I cannot fully explain this in words,” she said. “It is… it is about being able to remove yourself from your body and allow the flow of energy. This is why you sit with the palms up,” she explained. “Through one hand, bad energy leaves the body. Through the other, good energy enters the body. These energies can, and do, hide in memories old and new. If you can remove the bad energy from a memory, it won’t pain you so much to think about it anymore.”

Sten nodded, trying to understand this strange concept.

“This isn’t going to be easy, Sten,” Zyrian warned. “You won’t be able to get it right the first time you try it. Ah!” she hushed when Sten opened his mouth to say something, raising one finger to silence him. When he closed his mouth, she continued. “That is not an insult, let me be very clear about that. The complete focus this takes is far from easy to obtain. It involves gathering all your thoughts and putting them aside, essentially clearing your mind of all immediate thought and keeping your mind from wondering into your memories. This is not an exercise in memory or recollection. This is an exercise in taming your mind as you would tame your body. It is through this form of meditation that I was able to build the mental fortitude to resist the sloth demon within the fade and not succumb to its illusions of a better life. Understand?”

“Yes,” Sten replied.

“Alright. Now, breathing is a very important part of this,” she continued. “You want to keep your breaths deep and even. You should have no problem with that, since you do it already.” She closed her eyes and turned her head forward.

Sten contemplated doing what she did, but instead he continued to watch.

“Another important part is setting yourself up right. To do this, you take a deep breath. To breathe in is to allow good energy to flow into your body. To breathe out is to let the bad energy out. You want your back strait and your head up and forward. You don’t want to be over stiff, but you don’t want to slouch.” That said, Zyrian breathed in deeply through her nose and set her posture. It was only when this was done that she let out the breath slowly.

Seeing that as a cue to follow, Sten closed his eyes and did the same thing.

“Now comes the relaxation part of the meditation,” Zyrian said without moving or opening her eyes. “Focus on individual parts of your body, from top to bottom or bottom to top. Both ways work, but I prefer top to bottom.”

“Then that is what I will do,” Sten said, also without opening his eyes or moving.

“Alright. Start at the very top of your head. Your scalp tingles and warms, the warmth moving down and washing away any doubts with it. It moves to your neck and shoulders. Slowly you feel muscles, tense and weary from battle, begin to loosen and unwind like a knot slowly sliding undone. When the tension is gone, your neck and shoulders feel warm and comfortably relaxed, as if a weight has been lifted from you. The warmth moves down to your arms and chest, washing away all tension as it creeps farther down….”

Sten listened to Zyrian’s words and did his best to act them out on his own body. She spoke of this warmth seeping down the body and washing away worries, frustrations and tension. To his surprise, it actually worked. He could feel the warmth she spoke of seep through every part of his body until he was left in a state of such utter relaxation as he had never before felt.

“Easy part’s over,” Zyrian said. “Time for the hard stuff.”

Sten grunted in response.

“This is what you have to do. While keeping yourself completely relaxed,” she started, “you must focus your mind. To do this, think of one thing, and one thing only. You must not let your mind waver and wander to other things. The way I do this is I envision myself sitting in a white room. There is no furniture. No windows. No doors. Just yourself. Concentrate hard on nothing but the room.”

Sten did as Zyrian described. He started thinking that he would be able to focus his mind and do just as she said. He couldn’t have been farther from correct.

The Qunari strained to focus his mind on that one thing while simultaneously keeping his relaxed posture. The more he tried to concentrate on the white room, though, the more his own mind resisted and he soon found his mind drifting to meaningless topics. Such as how close Zyrian was sitting next to him. The sound of her even breathing and heartbeat. Her scent, which reminded him of some sweet and wild flower, dangerous as it was beautiful.

Sten clenched his jaw against those thoughts and forced himself to ignore them. But when he heard Zyrian stand up he couldn’t help but break his attempted meditation and look over at her.

Zyrian smiled knowingly at Sten, her sage still smoldering in her hand. “I told you it wouldn’t be easy.” She patted his shoulder encouragingly as she walked past him. “Set yourself back up and keep at it. It’s my turn to make dinner.”

Sten furrowed his brow a bit as he watched her walk away. She had touched him; a feat nobody else in this camp would dare attempt. It still perplexed him as to why it was that she treated him as she would treat any normal human, with the same teasing and genuine kindness that she showed to everyone else. And perhaps, he wondered on occasion, her teasing was a sort of… endearment to those she liked. He had yet to see her tease and make fun of strangers.

Forcing himself to look away from her, Sten set himself back up again like Zyrian had shown him earlier, determined to do his damnedest to take the control over his mind like the strange human had her own. If she could do it, surely he could do it as well.


	8. Chapter 8

Zyrian stirred the pot of meaty rabbit stew she had prepared on the fire. It had been done for a while now, but the experience in the Circle of Magi had seemed to diminish or destroy the appetites of some of her companions.

Morrigan had served herself up a small bowl before retreating back to her own little campfire without so much as a single word. Leliana and Wynne chose to eat nothing. Sten was still sitting at the edge of the campsite meditating. As for Alistair, she didn’t know where he was and couldn’t rightly bring herself to care that much. She was still angry at him and he had yet to apologize, despite how many days had passed since his unexpected outburst.

She was even tempted to be a bit angry at Wynne for healing his nose for him, but she refrained. The mage had no idea the circumstances behind why his nose was broken, and she was a kindly person.

Even Zyrian herself had yet to eat any of the stew that she had so diligently made after gutting and skinning the rabbits she had caught, cutting their meat from their bones and feeding the remains to her mabari. It smelled good enough, but her mind was elsewhere at the moment.

The rouge finally had the time to herself to think of what had happened in the Fade. How she had had to save Wynne, Leliana and Sten, not only from the sloth demon, but from themselves. Unlike her, all three of them had been sucked in by the demon’s tricks. Even Sten. Leliana she could understand. Wynne, she didn’t know well enough to make a judgment on whether or not it was surprising that she had fallen for the ruse.

Sten, though…. Sten was different. If somebody had told her before that Sten would be sucked into the Fade and completely fall for a demon’s tricks of a better life or a false shot at redemption, she would have laughed right in their face and called them on their bullshit. Sten was a monolith of mental fortitude. He never faltered. Never showed any emotion short of anger and irritation.

Or so she had thought.

In the Fade, she had seen a part of the Qunari she would have never expected to see. His eyes had been sad when he looked at the demon conjured illusions of the other Qunari. Had appeared panicked as he faded from her sight. It made her think of other things she had noticed about him.

He no longer seemed to become overly annoyed with her while she asked her questions of him. There had even been a time or two where she swore she had seen him smile at her. Or as much as a smile as could be expected from him. A subtle twitch of his lip and a slight lightening of his violet eyes.

When he looked at her now she was sure it was with a spark of respect. Kindness, even. Perhaps. It was quite the change from the way he used to look at her. As though she was been some tiny, insignificant thing that he was forced to follow because he felt indebted to her for freeing him from the cage.

It made her wonder how much nicer he was willing to allow himself to be toward her. After all, they had only known each other for two weeks.

Her mind suddenly flashed to the dream she had had about him after she passed out drunk the night after what had transpired at Redcliffe. The sight of him leaning over her and stroking her face so gently had burned itself into her mind. Absentmindedly she reached up with one hand and ran her fingers across the skin just under her lower lip.

_It couldn’t have been real. The Sten I know would never…._ She couldn’t help but smile at the memory of the dream despite herself and bite her lower lip. It had seemed so real. So vivid. Her eyes widened a degree when her loins warmed at the thought of Sten’s stern face hovering over hers. Of his fingers trailing ever so gently down her jaw to her chin. She pressed her legs together tightly. _Oh you are_ not _thinking like this about Sten._

“Zyrian?”

Zyrian, surprised by the sudden voice behind her while she had been off in her own thoughts, let out a little shriek. Doing the first thing that came to her mind she spun around with a ladle full of hot stew and threw it, ladle and all.

Jerked out of his attempt at meditation by Zyrian’s shrill screech, a sound he never heard her make before, Sten grabbed his sword from its spot on the ground next to him and shot to his feet. Spinning around with the full intention of charging at something dangerous that had attacked her, he took pause when he saw Alistair cry out in pain, clutch his face with both hands and wipe at it furiously. He slowly lowered his blade in confusion, completely baffled as to what had just happened.

It took Zyrian a few seconds to realize that she had just thrown a ladle full of hot rabbit stew right into Alistair’s face, her heart still pounding from the surprise of him suddenly appearing behind her.

“You just threw hot stew into my face!” Alistair exclaimed as he wiped the scalding substance from his face and hoped it didn’t burn him as bad as it felt like it did.

“You snuck up on me!” Zyrian retorted, hoping she wasn’t blushing at all. Though she wouldn’t say anything about it, she had to thank the Maker for little favors.

Such as the inability of people to read minds.

“I suppose I should count myself lucky that you weren’t sharpening your knife,” Alistair said, poking at parts of his face and finding that it didn’t hurt as much now that the stew had been wiped off. He felt a knot on his head, though, from where the ladle had hit him. “Remind me to never walk up from behind you if I don’t know what you’re holding.”

“Why in the name of the Maker did you sneak up on me?” Zyrian growled, her pulse beginning to return to normal now, though still secretly embarrassed by her own thoughts.

“I came to apologize about what I said to you after what happened at Redcliffe,” Alistair replied.

“Alistair…”

“Please, just hear me out,” Alistair replied, his voice genuine.

Zyrian looked up at him for a few seconds. “Fine.”

“Now, I know you’re still probably mad at me, and I’m not even sure you’ll believe me, but I really am sorry about what I said. I should have never said it. I felt bad right after I said it.” He let out an exasperated sigh and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “It was so stupid of me, and I feel like an idiot. You’re right. I didn’t tell you what I thought about the whole blood mage idea, and I should have. I just kept quiet, and I’m not even sure why I did. But… I know it wasn’t your fault. There weren’t many choices and… I suppose it was better than killing Connor. I mean, look what we ran into when we went to the Circle. If we had gone to them, we probably would have just wasted time.”

Alistair looked Zyrian in the eye. “You’re my friend, Zyrian, and I should have never taken my anger out on you. Looking back on it…” he lowered his eyes, “I was angrier at myself than I was you.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “And I apologize for taking it out on you. And on another note, thank you for finding my mother’s amulet, and even remembering that I told you about it. Most people ignore me when I start talking. I, uh… I deserved that broken nose.”

Zyrian crossed her arms over her chest as she looked at Alistair and listened to his apology. “Yes. You did,” she replied.

Alistair didn’t fail to notice the light tone that Zyrian’s voice had taken. He looked at her once more and noticed the small smile on her face. He smiled hopefully. “So, do you accept my apology?”

“Sure, Alistair.” She pointed a finger at him. “Just don’t do it again, or I’ll do worse than break your nose.”

Alistair drew an invisible X on his chest. “Cross my heart.” Looking to his right, he saw the soup ladle on the ground. Leaning over and picking it up, he gave Zyrian a lopsided grin and handed it to her. “I think you dropped this.”

Zyrian smiled back up at him and took the ladle, her fingers brushing Alistair’s as she did so. She turned her eyes down and wiped the dirt and grass off of it before once again making eye contact with Alistair. “You want some stew? I promise I’ll put it in a bowl this time. Won’t even hit you with the ladle,” she said in a teasing tone of voice as she continued to stir the pot of stew.

Alistair laughed good-naturedly at that. He looked down at the spot next to Zyrian then looked back at her with a suave grin. “Anyone sitting here?”

“Only the air,” Zyrian replied.

Sten watched as Alistair spoke to Zyrian. Though he couldn’t quite hear what Alistair was saying, he could see that whatever he had said had made Zyrian smile. He could see her smile broaden when Alistair handed her the ladle that she had thrown at him. His sharp eyes also caught how their fingers brushed when he handed her the ladle. The way they looked in each other’s eyes. She said something that made Alistair laugh, and then he sat down mere inches away from her.

He didn’t like it.

For reasons he didn’t understand, Sten tightened his grip on his greatsword’s hilt and walked toward the two Grey Wardens. He stopped a few feet from the two of them. “Draw your weapon,” he demanded; his deep, even voice betraying nothing.

Alistair and Zyrian both looked up at the large, imposing form of the Qunari, Zyrian pausing as she poured some soup into a bowl for Alistair.

Alistair furrowed his brow a bit at the way Sten was staring at him with his weapon in hand. “Uh… are you talking to me?”

“Your weapon,” Sten repeated impatiently. “Draw it.”

“Why? Are we under attack?” Alistair asked, both he and Zyrian looking around for signs of danger.

“I want to see what you can do,” Sten said. Something was compelling him to do this. To challenge Alistair and see what the man was truly capable of, despite what he had seen him do in battle. No. Sten wanted a personal example of Alistair’s abilities.

Alistair furrowed his brow in confusion. “You want to fight me? Just like that? Why?”

“You are a Grey Warden,” Sten replied in his cold and stoic voice. “How are you going to face an archdemon if you cannot face me?”

Smiling as if it were all a joke, Alistair shrugged nonchalantly. “It is a mystery, I’ll admit.”

Sten narrowed his eyes at Alistair, the humor falling from Alistair’s face at the look the Qunari gave him. “I should let your weakness damn us all?” he growled at the Grey Warden. “Draw your sword. I’ll try not to injure you permanently.”

Alistair frowned up at Sten, a bit annoyed at the Qunari for butting in on he and Zyrian and demanding a battle out of nowhere. “I don’t have to prove anything to you.” He looked away from the Qunari. “Forget it.”

“Hm. So you do have a spine,” Sten said. “Pity you don’t use it.”

“Hey!” Alistair exclaimed, looking yet again up at Sten, though this time angrily.

“Calm down, children,” Zyrian said in a bored tone. “No need for locking horns. Right now I have a five rabbit stew. The only one that’s eaten any is Morrigan, and she barely eats. So why don’t you both stop beating your fists on your chests, sit down, and help me eat this stew before Xandir convinces me to give half of it to him. You can assert your dominance later.”

It was Alistair that looked away from Sten first, turning his attention back to the bowl of stew that Zyrian was now continuing to dish up for him.

Zyrian looked over at Sten. “Are you going to sit down, or just stand there?”

Sten muttered something under his breath that Zyrian didn’t understand before moving to her other side. Rather violently he plunged his greatsword into the ground, taking satisfaction in the way Alistair looked over wearily at him. The Qunari couldn’t help but notice, though, that Zyrian didn’t so much as flinch.

By the time Sten had sat down Zyrian already had a bowl of soup ready. She handed it to him once he was situated and offered him a small smile when she did so. Something about that smile she gave him eased the unexplained rage he had felt when he saw the two Wardens sitting together, though it did not erase the urge to challenge Alistair to a fight.

When Sten accepted the bowl Zyrian grabbed another bowl and served herself up some of the stew, finding her appetite once again. “So how’d your meditation go, Sten?” she asked. She was into one of her ‘see how long I can question the Qunari’ moods, and was eager to see how quickly he would become annoyed at her.

“It is… difficult. As you said,” Sten replied, though a bit reluctantly. He was sure that she had been overly dramatic about the difficulty of her sort of meditation, but forcing his mind to do as he wanted it to do was just as hard as she had said. He’d been unable to keep his mind clear for more than a few minutes at a time. Certainly not as long as she had been able to do the day after she had consumed far too much wine.

“I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it eventually,” Zyrian assured him as she ate her stew. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the first male that was taught this that actually managed to stick with it long enough to get it right. Most men don’t have the patients and attention span of we women. It’s a gift of the gender. But I’m sure you won’t take my word on it. After all, you’re pretty sure I’m a man.”

Sten paused before he spooned more of his stew into his mouth and looked down at Zyrian.

“Wait, what?” Alistair asked. He looked at Sten then looked back at Zyrian and gave her a lopsided smile. “He thinks you’re a man?”

Zyrian nodded as she chewed up some meat and potatoes. “Yeah. Apparently, in Qunari culture, women don’t fight. Only men fight. Therefore, in Sten’s mind, since I fight, I cannot possibly be a woman.” She leaned over and playfully patted Alistair on the back. “So surprise, Alistair. I’m actually just one of the guys. Maybe we can go play in the mud and punch each other in the arms until they are covered in bruises later, then hit the town and chase some tail.”

Alistair and Zyrian both laughed at the absurdity of the notion of Zyrian being a man and the two of them tomcatting around while Sten sat silently and glared at the two. He was confused. For reasons he could not comprehend, he didn’t like seeing Alistair sitting so close to Zyrian. Didn’t like seeing Alistair make her look so… happy, despite how much anger she had pointed at him for taking his anger out on her after the Redcliffe incident.

But there was something else he did not understand. Despite Alistair being the one that made her laugh, he had to admit to himself that he enjoyed the sound of her laughter. It was sweet and melodic as it landed on his ears, the sound driving away some of his anger. For some reason though, he had a ridiculous wish that _he_ was the one that made her laugh.

Sten forced himself to look away from the two and continue eating. _This is nonsense,_ he thought to himself. _Such notions have no place in the Qun._ Yet again, he found his eyes drifting over to Zyrian and Alistair, practically gritting his teeth at the sight of them so close together.

After that, the three of them continued eating. Zyrian and Alistair made idle conversation while Sten ate silently, though neither of them seemed to notice. Sten was the quietest member of their little group. He rarely started conversations, unless to berate people, and he spoke little when spoken to.

Except to Zyrian. With her, it was different. He was willing to speak to her. More so now than when she had first freed him from his cage.

After four more bowls of stew, Alistair decided to turn in for the night, leaving Sten and Zyrian alone by the fire.

Sten felt his tension ease considerably once Alistair was gone. This was how it was almost every night, since he and Zyrian seemed to require less sleep than the others.

Zyrian leaned forward and served herself her third bowl of stew. She also took Alistair’s bowl and poured some stew into it. Sten briefly wondered why she did that until she let out a short whistle and Xandir came loping over. She set the bowl on the ground in front of her mabari and scratched behind his ear. Xandir licked Zyrian’s wrist before digging into his bowl of stew.

“So,” Zyrian said as she straightened up and wiped the dog slobber from her wrist onto her pants, “this whole time I’ve been calling you Sten, but in the Fade those fake Qunari called you ‘the sten’, and you told me that they call you that just as people call me ‘the warden’. Does that mean that Sten isn’t actually your name?”

“In a way,” Sten replied.

“So… it’s not?” Zyrian paused to take a bite of her stew. “If Sten isn’t your name and I’ve been calling you by your title the entire time we’ve known each other, then what _is_ your name?”

“Qunari do not have ‘names’, as you would define them,” Sten replied. He could see that this was going to lead to nothing but a barrage of her seemingly endless questions, but he had to admit that over the weeks he had not only grown to expect this from her, but to enjoy it. Nobody else in this group really spoke to him. They might say a thing or two, and if he was in the mood he would respond, but for the most part Leliana, Alistair and Morrigan left him alone. He was certain that it would be no different with Wynne. To them, he was just a Qunari. Some kind of creature to be feared.

Both of these were true. He _was_ a Qunari, and he _should_ be feared. Despite this, Zyrian was the only one that didn’t care. The only one that tried to converse with him. He had grown quite used to it, and no longer wished for her to shut her mouth every time she started to speak to him.

“Care to add a little more of an explanation then that?” Zyrian teased. “Or are you going to keep up the ‘big, mysterious Qunari’ front?”

“Qunari have their title which reflects their role within the Qun. I am a sten. It is who I am and, therefore, that is what you call me.”

Zyrian looked at Sten curiously. “So you don’t have an actual name like the rest of us?” The concept was strange to her, but then again, so was almost everything Sten said. They were from very different places with cultures that were worlds apart.

“Not as you would define a name,” Sten repeated, unsure of how else to word it. It was difficult to explain these things in a language Zyrian could understand. There were so many words in the Qunari tongue that did not translate right into hers.

“Ok. So let me see if I have this strait,” Zyrian said, needing to speak aloud what she was thinking to help her understand. “Your name is Sten, because you are _a_ sten?”

“That is likely as good of an explanation as you will get and understand,” Sten replied, mildly satisfied by her understanding.

“Ok. So what exactly is a sten?”

“As you would understand it, a sten is…” Sten paused to think of the correct wording that could at least roughly convey what his role was, “a commander of a group of soldiers,” he replied tentatively. It was the best he could think of.

To Sten’s surprise, Zyrian chuckled. “Having to follow instead of lead must be quite the change of pace for you,” she teased. Absentmindedly she set her bowl of stew on the ground next to her.

Unsure if she was giving it to him or not, Xandir, having already finished the bowl she had given him earlier, quietly snuck closer to his master and began to eat the stew from her bowl.

“Yes,” Sten agreed with a frown as he looked at the fire. “I do not like it. It is not my place.”

“And yet you continue to follow, despite that,” Zyrian said as she looked at him.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it must be done,” Sten found himself saying. But the question was a valid one, and one he had often asked himself. He always justified his following her, though, as a way to gather information about the Blight for the Arishok. Recently, however, a strange thought would flit into his mind every now and again. Did he truly only follow to gather information, or was there another reason, another motivation, for his continued following?

Zyrian smiled a bit and chuckled as she shook her head at him. It was hard to get a strait and forward answer from him. She had had a few conversations where his answer to her only lead her to another question, and that question to another answer, and that answer back to the original question. He could speak in a way that made one talk in circles and never get the answer they were seeking, and she wondered if he did it on purpose or by accident.

“Well even if you did have a name like I would define one, I would probably continue to call you Sten anyways,” Zyrian said, bringing her legs up to her chest and crossing her arms on top of her knees.

Sten furrowed his brow at that and looked down at her for the first time since Alistair had left. “Why is that?” he asked. It felt a bit odd asking questions. Zyrian was always the one to ask, and he usually answered.

“Well for one that’s how you introduced yourself, and that’s how I’ve known you for two weeks. And two, because it suits you.” She cocked her head at him a bit, something he noticed that she did on occasion, as if tipping her head to the side made it easier to see things. “It sounds strong and sturdy,” she chuckled, “and I don’t think anyone could describe you as being weak and soft.”

“If they did, they would not be around long enough to wish they had not said it,” Sten replied with a bit of a growl.

“You are as a stone, Sten,” she said.

“A stone?”

Zyrian nodded. She opened her mouth to speak but paused when she heard Xandir whine. She looked over to see the Mabari sitting next to her and holding an empty bowl in his mouth. She took the bowl from the wardog, filled it again and set it on the ground once more.

“Yes. A stone,” Zyrian continued once the dog has his stew. She looked back over at Sten, using one of her hands and a flick of her head to push her hair back over her shoulder. “Strong and sturdy and a bit rough around the edges, but sometimes if you crack a stone open you may find something marvelous inside.”

Sten frowned and furrow his brow. “Are you saying you wish to crack my head open?”

At that, Zyrian couldn’t help but laugh. _It’s so funny when he misinterprets our language,_ she thought to herself.

Sten wasn’t sure what he had said that she found so funny, but it gave him a wholly abnormal thrill to hear her laugh, and know that he had caused it. Not Alistair.

“No, Sten. It’s a metaphor,” Zyrian replied, her laughing starting to die down, though she still chuckled.

“Metaphor?” Sten repeated slowly. “I do not know this word.”

“It means that I don’t intend to literally crack you open and see what is inside. It’s a figure of speech. What I literally meant is you put up a tough front, but once someone gets past that tough exterior, you aren’t as cold as you appear to be.” She stopped chuckling, though she continued to smile at him. “You’re a good person, Sten. If non Qunari men were half as loyal and honorable as you, I think this world would be a better place.”

Sten was taken slightly aback at the compliment. Nobody had ever said such a thing about him. Certainly not a human. They insulted him. Were afraid of him. As he looked into her piercing blue eyes, though, he could see that she genuinely meant everything she had just said.

“That is… unexpected,” Sten replied, not knowing what else to say.

Zyrian chuckled. “What? Is it some kind of startling revelation that you actually are a good person?” she asked with a bemused grin.

“No. It is an unexpected thing to hear a human say,” Sten replied. “But you are… unusual for a human.”

“That’s not much of a shock,” Zyrian replied, reaching next to her to pet her mabari as he licked his bowl clean. “Being ‘average’ isn’t my forte. Never has been.”

Sten grunted in response and turned his eyes to the fire, setting his empty bowl on the ground next to him.


End file.
